


The Predatory Wasp

by silvercistern



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Reunion Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-03-17 10:44:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 62,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3526334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercistern/pseuds/silvercistern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years without any contact was a long time. The distance had built new walls on top of old wounds. They were still best friends, maybe, but did they really know each other anymore? In an ideal situation, they'd spend some time alone, maybe go on a few small adventures. Take it slow. Rediscover what drew them to each other in the first place.</p><p>But Killua had officially decided that the situation was not ideal. In fact, it was so much the opposite that he was going to have an enormous hickey on the inside of his elbow.</p><p>Because instead of taking things slow, they were pretending to make out in a closet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nothing quite like the blinding light

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [黄蜂凶猛](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12311580) by [CarmenLX](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarmenLX/pseuds/CarmenLX)



After gazing at what seemed like an endless number of waterfalls, they were finally on their way back to their lodgings.

The return trip to the small set of tourist villas on Scabtree Island, the Waterfall Capital of the World, was all downhill, following a rocky, forested stairway that skirted the largest and most dramatic of the cascades. It was less stairs, and more slide than Killua was comfortable with. He ended up carrying Alluka on his back most of the way because she was still too clumsy for her gangly legs. Even on his back they seemed to catch on everything.

“I wish you were still eleven,” he said through gritted teeth after a root that had caught on her outstretched foot flew backwards and smacked him right in the junk.

Nanika laughed, and then Alluka apologized, even though he could tell she didn’t feel too bad. He didn’t have the energy to argue with her. There was something weighing on his mind. It wasn’t codifiable, though. Birds were still chirping, the quiet sounds of animals in the undergrowth had not stopped, the wind was blowing in a friendly way. There was no indication that anything out of the ordinary was about to happen, and yet something felt… off, about the day, and he couldn’t tell what it was.

Finally reaching the bottom of the rocky incline he let his sister down, and the two of them descended the final path that cut out and away from a steep, bare embankment. Nanika was chattering, saying, “Flowers, flowers flowers,” over and over again, like she tended to do when she learned how to say a new word. His foot planted firmly on the even ground marking the end of the trail, and with that newfound stability the feeling of _something_ that had nagged him all day unfolded into what it had always been.

Anticipation.

The entire forest seemed to go still, and Nanika fell quiet, replaced with Alluka, who looked at him questioningly.

He knew, before it even started, what was going to happen next.

The air behind his ears pressed into his aura as though expanding from a distant explosion. Every nerve ending in his body jumped to attention, aware that something he had ignored and denied and pushed from his mind was suddenly, beyond all expectations, real.

“KILLUUUUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

It was a familiar cry in a wildly unfamiliar octave. The sound resonated in his ears like a temple bell, drowning out everything else. Somewhere Alluka was calling to him and pulling at his arm, but that place was distant, far from the present moment.

He looked up over his shoulder and what he saw might as well have been his own death, time compressed itself just the same. His brain could not wrap itself around the changes in appearance or voice, but none of those things mattered, because the young man half-running, half-stumbling down the bank was unmistakable. He would know him in complete darkness, in a blinding snowstorm, at the bottom of the sea.

Even though he expected it, the impact of a body that had been running so fast and so hard down so sharp an incline pushed what little air was left out of Killua’s lungs and knocked him to the ground. His assailant, who clearly still had no concept of his own strength, tumbled up and over, rolling across the grass and landing ten feet away in an undignified heap.

Somewhere Alluka was calling out someone’s name, happy and excited, but Killua could barely hear her.

Years of training put him on autopilot, aura turning to electricity turning to the chemical impulse to _move_ bringing him to a tense crouch, while the other man still lay on the ground, shaking like someone laughing (or crying?) hysterically. The moment was light and heavy all at once. Killua didn’t know what to do with his body, with his hands. Where were they supposed to go? The sound of his name still rang in his ears, whirling through his brain, shattering all the windows and kicking open all the closed doors.

He stood, thrusting his hands into his pockets to steady himself.

“Yo,” he said, somewhere between an awed whisper and a disinterested grunt.

Black spiky hair flew upwards, revealing dark teary eyes and a wobbly smile that filled the entire world before it grew into a grin that shattered reality.

“Killua…” began a low, soft voice, “I _found_ you.”

Killua Zoldyck was nineteen years old when Gon Freecss slammed back into his life, and his world rearranged itself.


	2. The telling gets old

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a funeral for a very elderly person who lived a long life. While it was written to be a joyful celebration, it may still cause some distress.

**"Alluka, you _didn’t_**.”

The harsh shout pierced the still morning air of Whale Island. The birds that had been up until that moment happily singing to each other over the hum of the distant ocean crashing against the island cliffs, fell silent. An instant later, they scattered in complete panic at the slamming of a door as a lithe young man in loose athletic shorts and a wrinkled turtleneck stumbled out of the house, hissing into his cell phone.

“Alluka _, tell me_ you didn’t _,_ ” he repeated.

 _“Nii-chan, I don’t understand why you’re so upset,_ ” her sweet voice floated across the line. “ _I thought, I mean, you two were **so** **happy** to see each other I just assumed that you finally figured things out. Didn’t you go to Whale Island to be alone for awhile?_ ”

“Figure out what? I haven’t seen him in years! We went to Whale Island for a FUNERAL!” Killua shrieked, then caught himself. Everyone was still asleep, and even if they weren’t, he didn’t want them to hear this. He lowered his voice until he was hissing again. “Gon’s great-grandmother died! I came for moral support, and because he _insisted_ that I meet his stupid dad.”

Alluka snorted. She did it so much these days it was probably doing serious damage to her nasal cavity. “ _That sounds like something a boyfriend would do_ …”

“OR A BEST FRIEND!” His voice was high, on the verge of shouting before he caught himself and repeated, “Or a best friend! A perfectly normal thing a best friend would do. Alluka, why do you insist on reading into everything?”

Instead of a response to his question, a much younger version of Alluka’s voice called out his name.

Despite himself, Killua smiled. “Hi Nanika,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You would never do something like this to me, would you?”

“ _I love Killua,”_ Nanika giggled mischievously.

She was in on this too. They both were. Of course.

Killua slapped his forehead, dragging his fingers across his face until they caught on his bottom lip and snapped it back against his teeth. The pain did very little to clear his head, but the gesture had felt gratifying anyway.

“ _Anyway,_ ” Alluka spoke up, “ _Suzu is **your** friend. I just told her you’d be bringing a date when she called since you **never RSVP’d to her wedding invitation**._ ”

“I’ve been busy,” Killua muttered guiltily, until he remembered the reason why. “Busy taking _you_ on vacation, in fact. I was always going to come, I just forgot to–”

The clap of opened shutters slamming against the side of the house combined with the shock of being caught in what felt like an illicit conversation made Killua drop the phone. Directly overhead a grumpy, bedraggled, _old_ version of Gon’s face was hanging out of the window. Almost-Gon looked pissed.

“Oi!” he said in a voice that Killua had only heard via broadcast. “Can you be confused about feelings somewhere else? Some of us got in at four o’clock this morning.”

“Fuck off!” Killua retorted lamely, cheeks blazing with embarrassment. The man scoffed in response, wiped the drool stains from his face, and pulled his head back inside, ostensibly to go back to bed.

“ _Nii-chan what’s going on_?” Alluka asked when he finally put the phone back to his ear.

The blush on his face got a hundred times hotter, and he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly as the implications of what had just happened caught up with him.

“Uh… well… I think I just met Ging. And told him to fuck off.”

He wasn’t certain if it was Alluka or Nanika, but someone was squealing with laughter on the other end of the line.

“Thanks for your support,” he droned angrily, hanging up on her.

There was something deeply upsetting about the fact that he couldn’t just say no. It was an easy word. A single syllable that he yelled at people all the time.

But carried through with very rarely.

Alluka knew this. And the older she got, the more she had started to take advantage. It was turning into a real pain in the ass.

Of course Killua loved his sister more than life itself. She was, in any way that counted, his only real family. For a year, she had literally been the only person in his world. But she knew how to get what she wanted, especially out of him. Even completely free of her oldest brother’s influence, she turned out to be as deft at manipulation as Illumi was.

Or… had been, maybe.

She didn’t even have to use Nen to do it. Killua would have been completely screwed if Alluka hadn't also possessed the most generous of hearts.

Slouching against the house, head in his hands, he admitted to himself that she wasn’t the only person he cared about to whom that assessment probably still applied.

His sister, who loved any situation if it meant she got to meet new people, had no idea about anything, sometimes. And now she had done it again, only this time was _a million times_ worse than any forced introduction she’d put him through.

First of all, he couldn’t skip the wedding, because that would be the sort of thing a terrible person would do. He couldn’t just pretend Alluka hadn’t brought it up, because if he knew Suzu, everyone already expected him to show up in less than a week with Gon, his Real Live Boyfriend. If Killua explained that the whole thing had all been a misunderstanding, the question of why there was ever any confusion over the nature of his relationship would become everyone’s business. That meant attention, the last thing he wanted, especially since Gon’s sudden reappearance in his life had already put him on the verge of a silent emotional tailspin.

What if the _bridesmaids_ found out about it?

In the face of talking about his feelings with a gaggle of Suzu’s very talktative girlfriends, women that he only sort of knew, Killua wondered if it might just be easier to convince Gon to pretend they were together.

It could be fun, maybe.

In a soul-crushing kind of way.

  

“Killua what are you doing?” Mito scolded gently, when she came downstairs forty minutes later and found him alone with his agony, frying eggs and bacon. “There was no need for you to make breakfast. You should have got me up.”

He smiled calmly at the stove, internally desperate to find an excuse for being up with the sun that wasn’t: “ _I couldn’t sleep because a dear friend woke me up with a text about how excited she was to meet my nonexistent boyfriend at her wedding_.”

With the uncomfortable addendum of: “ _Oh yeah, and she thinks its your son_.”

And the downright mortifying conclusion that: “ _Also I think Ging has figured all of this out already somehow because he’s basically a wizard._ ”

He decided on an excuse that was as near to the truth as it was possible to be without getting into any emotional details and then turned the charm up to eleven to sink the delivery.

“It’s no trouble, Mito-san. I was up anyway because of the time difference. I hope you don’t mind. Breakfast is the only meal I know how to cook, after all.”

“Of course I don’t mind. It is a bit of a help,” the older woman smiled, showing the lines of grief and weariness around her eyes. “ _He_ ,” she lingered on the word in annoyance, “arrived so much later than expected and I… I didn’t get much sleep.”

“Yo, Mito,” a voice called down the stairs as if on cue, “is breakfast ready? I’m starving.”

An entirely new flower of anxiety bloomed in Killua’s chest. It was becoming a regular garden in there.

“DAMN IT, GING FREECSS, YOU CAN JUST WAIT TO EAT UNTIL YOUR SON IS UP!” Mito shrieked so loudly the house reverberated.

Killua dropped the spatula in shock, only just catching the handle with his toes before it clattered to the ground.

“Well,” Ging snorted, “he’s definitely up now.” He was shambling down the stairs, giving Killua his first full glimpse of the man he had traveled all over the world to find, but never quite managed to meet.

He was… small. A bit shorter and downright scrawny compared to Gon. If the slouched, grumpy way he carried himself was any indication of his personality, height wasn’t the only difference between the two.

Killua knew that Leorio had taken over the man’s codename as the Boar of the Zodiacs, and although neither he nor Ging had altered his appearance to resemble the animal, it was clear that the latter fit the part naturally:  all bristles and spikes and grime, from his wild hair, to the dark shadow on his chin, to his absurdly hairy bare feet. Killua had seen Gon literally covered in mud from head to toe, and even then he hadn’t seemed as _filthy_ as his father was.

But more telling, Killua felt no strength from him at all. If he hadn’t already been told that Ging was one of the most powerful Nen users in the world, Killua would have thought he was a helpless wandering tramp who had accidentally stumbled into Mito’s spotless home.

The way Mito treated him did not contradict this assumption.

“Ging,” she lifted her head haughtily, pretty much disgusted at him for just existing, “This is Killua. Gon’s best friend. I’m sure Gon wanted to introduce you to him himself, but since you got here so _late_ last night there’s not much to be done.”

“You’re the Zoldyck, right?” he ignored Mito’s jab completely to inspect Killua warily. He was acting as though their earlier encounter never even took place, which did even more to put Killua on edge. At any moment he could use what he had heard, and both of them knew it.

Killua nodded, hands in his pockets.

“You must be pretty tough,” Ging drawled. “Not an easy family to leave.”

“Guess you and me have something in common, then,” Killua coolly responded, flicking the spatula up with his toes and catching it just above his shoulder. He was supposed to be meeting this man, but without his intending it, they were already engaged in some kind of psychological showdown.

Mito didn’t seem to care. In fact, she looked pleased beyond all words.

Ging cleared his throat, face falling flat, “Yeah, yeah, I was a shit dad, congratulations on that original observation.”

A loud thump coming from the second floor stopped Mito before she could comment further.  

“He just put on his boots, and he’ll be down here in thirty seconds,” Killua turned his attention back to the breakfast. He quickly removed the last of the bacon from the skillet and brought it to the table, sitting it with the rest of the food. “If you make him think you hate me already, during breakfast I’m going to silently and repeatedly stab you in the places it will hurt most.”

For a brief moment, Mito giggled like a child.

Then Gon dropped into the room like a whirlwind, and they all sat to eat.

 

Complaining was the second thing Gon did, right after stuffing his mouth with bacon. Though Killua was still not used to his voice resonating so much lower, regardless of pitch, Gon’s whine was unmistakable.

“Awhh, wait… you met already? Killua, you know I wanted to introduce you!”

“Wh-what was I supposed to do?” he sputtered. “Just pretend he wasn’t there till you got your lazy ass out of bed?”

“Killua should not swear in front of Mito-san,” Gon admonished him through his eggs.

Ging snickered, shoveling an impossible amount of rice into his mouth before informing everyone, “If I remember right, Mito’s first word was ‘damn.’”

“ ** _Ging!_** ”

“C’mon, Mito! Our dads worked on fishing boats. There wasn’t exactly a finishing school on Whale Island.”

Though Mito was sputtering with rage, it did not escape Killua’s notice that Ging’s presence seemed to draw her out into more than the shadow of herself she had been when she first chided him for cooking breakfast. Complain though she might, her cousin’s company made her feel, if not better, then certainly distracted. From what Killua had come to understand, Ging hadn’t come home when Mito’s parents had died, or even when his own father had been lost at sea.

He wondered what had brought him back this time.

“It was probably your terrible influence,” she huffed, gaining control of herself. “Gon grew up to be a perfect gentleman.”

Gon grinned widely despite the fact that he still had a mouthful of food peeking out from between his teeth.

“You are disgusting,” Killua rolled his eyes.

He hadn’t really touched his food – his stomach was tied up in knots, and had been since Alluka had called. He tried to disguise his unease as fatigue from travel, but surrounded by two of the more perceptive people he could think of, and one weirdo who seemed almost clairvoyant at the most inconvenient times, he didn’t expect his plan to work very well.

Of course, there were other things on everyone’s mind, including his. 

As the meal drew to a close, a heavy silence slowly descended, replacing the jovial atmosphere as everyone reminded themselves of the reason they were gathered together at all. Mito started clearing the table and a moment later, Gon stood up. He walked to the kitchen sink and turned on the tap to wash the dishes. Without asking, Killua joined him, taking a dishtowel and drying each plate as Gon washed it. Gon’s grateful smile was a sunbeam through the gloom but it wasn’t enough to cut through the silence.

“You boys should go get dressed,” Mito murmured when they were nearly finished. He was about to protest that they could easily do the rest, but Gon agreed readily. Killua assumed that he knew more about what Mito needed than he did, so he stayed quiet. As they ascended the stairs, the vicious noise of Mito attacking the dishes almost covered up the quiet sound of her crying.

But not quite.

The two of them were staying in Gon’s old room, a space that seemed much smaller with two fully-grown men inside. When they got upstairs Gon insisted that Killua shower first so that he didn’t run out of hot water. There was no point in arguing with Gon once he’d made up his mind, so Killua quickly washed up, and then returned to the room so Gon could have his turn.

He stood in his underwear for a long time trying to decide what to wear between the two options he had brought along. Despite spending his early years in the business of killing, he had never attended a funeral in his life. During Netero’s memorial he had been keeping vigil in the hospital, and since then he’d just had the miraculous luck to not know anyone who had died. At a complete loss as to what was appropriate, and not wanting to seem disrespectful to the customs of the island, he decided to just wait and ask Gon.

He was still in his boxer briefs, just pulling his undershirt over his head when a darkly tanned foot pushed open the door, followed by Gon himself. The sight of him stopped Killua in the middle of pulling the shirt down over his shoulders and chest and he stood there awkwardly, half in and half out of his clothes.   

Even though it had been several weeks since the two of them had reunited, all of that time had been spent traveling in Alluka’s company. For her sake Gon had always changed in the bathroom of whatever hotel they were staying in. But now that she was gone, it was already apparent that he had just as little modesty as he had possessed at the age of twelve. Both of his hands were running a fluffy white towel over his deflated hair, and another was slung low around his hips. Tiny streams of water ran down his chest, across a broad expanse of–

For the sake of his sanity, Killua pulled his shirt on the rest of the way and forced himself to look intently at the wall. He knew he hadn’t been casual enough. He was certain Gon had caught the sudden frantic motion. Any second now, he was going ask what was wrong, and Killua did not have a clue how he was going to answer because he just had not seen this coming.

Which was stupid, really. What did he expect to happen to someone who had always been obsessively dedicated to getting strong? Anyone who trained that hard was probably going to bulk up. He hadn’t as much, but his mother was built like a willow tree, and he clearly took after her.

Considering Ging’s physical appearance, Gon’s biological mother had to have been nothing short of a force of nature.

But none of that mattered, because Killua was not for one second going to allow himself to agonize over how… _cut_ Gon had become, let alone admit it to the man himself.

He was saved by a knock.

“Hey… uh,” his unexpected hero’s gruff voice was muffled by the thick wooden door. “Can I come in?”

Without bothering to ask Killua if he wanted to put on pants, Gon called out his assent and Ging threw open the door. The man began speaking immediately as though he had rehearsed what he was about to say a dozen times. Forgoing all logic, Killua was overcome with the certainty that his overheard conversation from earlier was going to be brought up. Between that, and Gon looking so… _good_ , he considered using kanmuru to jump out the window and catch a boat off the island.

“So, the thing is,” the disheveled man began, “I don’t actually have anything to wear other than this,” he gestured at the Kurapika-down-on-his-luck tunic and jumpsuit ensemble he was wearing, “and I was wondering if I could…” Ging squinted at his son, trailing off as he realized the exact same thing Killua had just observed.

Gon stroked his chin, still wearing nothing but the towel. Killua noted out of the corner of his eye that it was starting to droop. He looked his father up and down appraisingly before acknowledging the unfortunate truth. “Uh… sorry Ging, but I don’t think you will fit in any of my clothes.”

His derelict father grimaced, whether it was in anticipation of Mito’s wrath, or in disgust at how petite he was compared to his much more muscular son, Killua wasn’t sure. But before he could figure it out, the younger Freecs’ eyes lit up with a sudden idea.

“I think you would fit in Killua’s, though!”

Killua grabbed the vest of the hundred-thousand jenny suit he had packed and held it to his chest protectively, but Gon continued, not noticing his distress at all, “If Ging rolled up the pant legs, and maybe the sleeves, I think it would work. At least they wouldn’t fall off like mine would.”

 _Over your nonexistent ass_ , went unsaid, of course.

Killua turned completely around, too irritated to care about Gon’s near-nudity. “Gon! I’m almost six inches taller than he is! He’s…” ‘ _filthy beyond belief_ ,’ “…going to look ridiculous with the pants rolled up.”

“Ging wears boots,” Gon said simply. “He can tuck the pants in, and roll the sleeves up to his elbows. No one will notice that they’re too long.”

Killua made an uncomfortable noise.

“Of course,” Gon smirked, “Ging needs to take a long shower before he can touch anything Killua owns.”

Based on the yowls that filled the house a few minutes later, Gon had used the last of the hot water.

* * *

“When I was six, my great grandma made me a fishing pole and taught me to fish,” Gon started simply, though it was obvious he was nervous. “She was really quiet by the water, and it made all the fish relax. She brought them in so quickly I thought that they wanted to be caught. She only ever kept the medium sized ones, so the little ones could grow, of course, but also because it made her sad to take a big fish out of the water where it had lived so long.”

Gon was standing next to Abe’s undecorated pine coffin and the open grave Killua had watched him dig through the hard earth the previous evening. The small cemetery was on the top of some of the island’s most dramatic sea cliffs, and the proximity to the ocean sent the wind whipping through his hair. He wasn’t wearing a suit – Killua didn’t think he owned one – just black slacks and a dark blue shirt buttoned most of the way with the sleeves rolled up. The other mourners were dressed similarly, in rustically formal, somber attire that would function just as well if the wearer decided to milk a cow after the service.

“Abe Freecss was a good person,” Gon continued. He wasn’t crying, not really, but the light from the late afternoon sun caught the unshed tears in his eyes. “She was honest, and funny, and she made the best bread I’ve ever eaten anywhere. She wasn’t afraid to help people, even if they didn’t seem to deserve it much. When my grandfather, and great aunt and uncle died, I think she must have been pretty sad, and felt really alone but she didn’t let that stop her from raising the most wonderful woman in the whole world.”

Killua glanced at Mito. She was furiously blushing through her tears.

“I’m not very good at speeches, but I loved my great grandma, and I will miss her,” Gon paused, taking a deep breath to pull himself together, and the tears that had gathered in his eyes rolled down his cheeks.

“I know everyone here will miss her too. Kenji, I know you liked to mend nets together in the mornings while everyone was at sea. Noko, I saw that you two were working on a village quilt together – it’s very nice. And Oli, I heard that she was helping you out in your work to start a school here. Everyone here has a hole in their lives now where Abe used to fit. But I think that’s a sign that a person lived a really good life, right? To have everyone miss her so much when she’s gone. That’s what I think, anyway. So, when I notice that hole, instead of dwelling on it, I’m going to try to remember the joy that I felt when it wasn’t empty. Thank you all very much for coming.”

Gon stepped away from the coffin and walked straight to Mito, holding her tightly while the woman silently wept, looking very small in his arms. Around them, friends and neighbors hugged each other, wiped their eyes, or blew their noses loudly into handkerchiefs. Killua blinked hard to push back his own tears. He had met Abe for a few days when he was a kid. He felt like it would be insulting to those who really had been close to the woman to act as though he knew her well. But it was hard to see such an open display of grief over a truly kind person and not react at all.

Being the only man wearing a three-piece suit at a rustic island funeral, a guest of someone he hadn’t seen in five years, was uncomfortable enough. Standing through this funeral next the rarely-washed and very jumpy Ging Freecss, who was himself sloppily clad in what Killua should have been wearing, made it worse. All this highlighted the fact that as an outsider Killua had no idea what feelings he was or was not allowed to feel. The situation was tailor-made to stand out as the singularly most out-of-place he had ever felt in his life.

Or it would have been, if he had taken his eyes off of Gon for a single second to actually experience any discomfort.

 

“Yo.”

Ging had appeared out of nowhere, _just_ behind him and Killua ground his teeth together to keep from jumping seven feet into the air. In front of them, the wake had reached raucous levels. Nearly everyone was drunk, dancing, laughing, or some combination of all three. He noticed that Ging himself smelled like skunked beer, which seemed appropriate.

“Don’t get beer on my clothes,” Killua muttered, eyes fixed on the spectacle in front of him, feeling like a complete outsider.

A thick stack of ten thousand jenny notes appeared in his peripheral vision.

“They’re my clothes now, so get off my back,” the older man yawned. “You’re a real pain in the ass, you know? I guess I can’t blame you, seeing as you can’t even get drunk at a wake, but you should try relaxing some.”

“You noticed?” Killua kept his voice as indifferent as he could, but turned his head to look at the man. Ging had disappeared completely for several hours after the funeral, and had apparently just now returned. Already his jawline was dark with the scruff Mito had made him shave off, and Killua’s shirt looked decidedly the worse for wear. He did not want to know what the man had been doing with his time.

He gave the clothes up as a loss and took the money, which was substantially more than they were worth, tucking it into the breast pocket of his jacket.

“You smell like a distillery but your eyes are as clear as they were this morning, and your whole body is tense,” Ging explained with the weary tone of someone who was sick of describing his outrageously accurate observations to idiots. “My guess is you built up a tolerance a long, long time ago. Alcohol tolerance doesn’t normally stick over time, though. I guess it must be genetics too…”

“I get it,” with irritated acquiescence Killua held up the fifth of whiskey he’d drank over the course of the past hour. It wasn’t that he necessarily disliked Gon’s father. He really didn’t think he had a point of reference to judge bad dads. But terrible father or not, he did not like the way the man seemed to be able to see through everyone, including himself. And he certainly didn’t want to talk about his family with someone who was so incompetent with his own.

“Shouldn’t you be annoying Mito? Hasn’t it been over fifteen years since you’ve seen her?”

Ging shrugged, gesturing to the mob of funeral attendees assembled in front of them. Their numbers had grown and the majority of them were engaged in a boisterous, folksy circle dance around a fire. Mito was in the center where a tattooed fisherman in his fifties was spinning her like a small child.

“She seems kind of busy. I’m heading out now anyway.”

Killua turned his entire body, “Then why are you talking to me? Shouldn’t you be talking to Gon? He’s _your_ kid and–”

“Gon wanted me to meet you,” Ging interrupted, watching his son with measured consideration. The man in question was executing complicated maneuvers with the only girl in the group older than fifteen and younger than thirty. “So I did. He didn’t insist I come for a heart-to-heart with him.”

Killua watched intently as Gon picked up the girl, and flipped her across his shoulders. She was very pretty, with a long strawberry braid and dimples. Killua wondered who she was. Had the two of them grown up together as young children? She said something that made Gon laugh and Killua accidentally snapped off the neck of the bottle he was holding.

“I think the one who needs that heart-to-heart is you, Zoldyck.”

Ging was gone before Killua could tell him to fuck off.

First his sister, now this. Everyone had gone fucking crazy.

He really, really wished he could get drunk.

 

It didn’t take long for the girl to start dancing with someone else, but it took ten more minutes for Gon to extradite himself from the throng. Once he finally did, he tripped over his own feet as he made his way across the beach. His once-neat ensemble was disheveled at best, shirt halfway unbuttoned and soaked with sweat.

“Killua! Why aren’t you dancing?” his voice was much louder than normal, and he tripped a second time before finally reaching him.

“You’re drunk!” Killua burst out incredulously.

Gon leaned his head against his shoulder and looked up. His face was flushed, a mix of alcohol and exertion and it was, well...

“Of course I am!” he smiled widely. “That’s what you do after a funeral! It’s the rules! Why aren’t you?”

“I can’t, idiot. Alcohol is a poison. It doesn’t work.”

He might as well have asked Gon to solve a complicated algebraic equation, he looked just as confused, “Okay, well… is that why you’ve been on edge all day?”

“Huh?”

Gon leaned into him even more, “Killua is really worried about something.”

“Am not.”

“You are!”

“I,” Killua pushed his friend, who had begun to cling, away into the sand. “am. not.”

Gon easily flipped himself back up to a standing position and craned his neck to crack it. “Let’s spar.”

“I’m not going to fight you while you’re drunk, Gon.”

“No Nen, no knife fingers, just me and Killua. It’ll be fun, and if I win you have to tell me what’s wrong.”

Completely without his consent, Killua felt his face heat up. “Why don’t you just go back and dance some more?” he snapped. But Gon had him and he knew it. Somehow he was even more difficult to deal with while intoxicated. The speech pattern from their youth had come back, and it was almost impossible to say no to.

“Are you scared you’ll lose?” he taunted.

“What?” Killua snorted. “No. You can barely stand up straight. I’d knock you on your back in like, a second. I’m still stronger than you, anyway.”

“Killua does not know that. We haven’t sparred in three years.”

“It’s been five years, Gon.”

“Well I’m still not good at math, but you won’t know if you’re stronger unless we fiiiiiight.”

Killua sighed angrily and began stripping off his jacket, “Okay, fine. But if you ruin my clothes I am going to kill you. Not that it matters, because this will be over in ten seconds.”

“So the first one on his back loses, yeah?”

“Sure,” he rolled his eyes. “So what do I get if I win?”

“Whatever Killua wants,” Gon said in a singsong voice unbuttoning his shirt the rest of the way and tossing it on the sand, leaving him in a white tank top that was so sweaty it was damn near transparent. As he walked past Killua confidently, he sounded a lot less drunk. “But you’ve got to beat me first.”

 

They found a deserted clearing about a hundred meters into the forest adjacent to the beach. Gon had been walking a little bit ahead, and he placed himself at the far end, giving them space to approach each other. The light from the full moon reflected back the clear, determined look on his face.

“You tricked me, you bastard!” Killua yelled. “You aren’t drunk at all.”

Gon laughed, “No, I am. My reaction time is a lot slower than normal. But you still won’t win.”

Killua chose that moment of explanation to rush him, using his superior speed and Gon’s admitted weakness to get the upper hand. It was a fairly risky move, and he knew it, but Gon had him extremely flustered and he needed this fight to end as soon as possible. He feigned with an elbow jab, and then kicked Gon in the side hard enough to knock down a horse.

At the age of thirteen, he had been strong enough to punch through concrete walls and open the sixteen-ton third door of the Testing Gate. He figured he had gained enough strength to open the sixth door about two years ago, though he obviously hadn’t been home to try it.

But as his leg connected, it became painfully obvious that knocking Gon down with a blow to his side was about as futile as trying to kick down the World Tree.

“Oof,” Gon laughed, swinging his own leg up to try to connect with Killua. He hadn’t lied, his reaction time was slower, and Killua managed to get out of range with ease. He landed in a crouch several feet away, realizing that the two of them were at an impasse. Gon couldn’t catch him, and because of the rules of the fight, he couldn’t land a blow of any real significance. His only chance was to knock his friend off-balance when he moved.

Of course, Gon seemed completely aware of this, and hadn’t budged an inch.

“You’ve sure changed,” Killua called to him, trying to gain some semblance of a psychological advantage. “What happened to the Gon who got offended when people didn’t go all out?”

Gon laughed as his opponent repeatedly danced in to lay a few lighting-fast hits, then skip away, “He… er… _I_ figured that killing someone who really wanted to fight with a single punch maybe was a bad idea?” He caught Killua’s foot and spun him around, raising his hand to hit him but missing the mark when Killua moved in the opposite direction, “Killua can blame Zushi for that. He made me lose to everyone I fought for half a year.”

“Zushi, hm?” Killua moved tantalizingly close, trying to get Gon to go after him. “That’s an interesting choice.”

Gon did not take the bait, standing in the same spot, with the same wide, guileless grin that he had had when they had trained with Bisky plastered across his face.

“It was kind of an accident,” he explained, casually blocking Killua’s hits. “I’d lost my Nen, missed my friends, and he was the only person still at Heaven’s Arena. I just asked him to train me.”

“Not thinking, like always,” Killua went in low in the off chance that Gon would trip. “Had he ever taught anyone _anything_ before?”

“Nope,” Gon did not trip. “But I got my Nen back in the end, so it was all fine… in fact, Zushi was a– _mflhhhhh_.”

Killua had jumped onto his shoulders, then flipped backwards into a handstand, legs still wrapped around Gon’s head. The only thing he had was superior height and he could use that coupled with the momentum of his dead weight to flip Gon over.

It was, not surprising considering Gon’s lower center of gravity, a serious mistake. Killua had never been particularly patient when it came to non-fatal fights, after all.

A half a second later, his back slammed into the ground and Gon followed, pressing his knee into his shoulder and leaning his leg across his chest. 

“Told youuuu,” he softly crowed.

And for a moment, it didn’t matter that he had lost, because Gon was there, and they were goofing around just like they had done before, and nothing else mattered just the two of them. Killua’s chest felt tight, but not out of anxiety. Gon was smiling down at him, and he wanted to just...

“Get _off_ , Gon.”

It didn’t matter what he wanted, because this was reality.

“Only if you tell me why you’re upset,” Gon lifted his knee cautiously. The look in his face said he would not hesitate to pin Killua down again if he tried anything.

Killua winced as he sat up. The moon had risen even higher, and it illuminated the clearing so brightly it was impossible to tell that it was night instead of just an overcast afternoon. Gon flopped down beside him, chuckling a little as he did so. Now that the fight was over it was once again obvious that he was clearly under the influence.

It was like he had a “get serious” override switch, or something.

“I know Killua probably doesn’t want to tell me because it has nothing to do with my grandma being dead, and he feel like he’s not allowed to talk about anything else. But it’s okay to have something bothering you, I know she wouldn’t mind.”

And he was as blunt as ever.

“Okay, fine!” Killua said through gritted teeth, wishing for the first time that the past five years had been more… dangerous, so he could have wiped the floor with Gon easily. But the downside of a somewhat normal life meant that he just hadn’t needed to train as ruthlessly as he would have if every day had been a life threatening disaster.

But Gon was looking at him like he was about to knock him down again, so he gathered thoughts, and decided to start with the logistical issue.  

“Well, first off, I need to leave Whale Island sooner than we thought.”

Gon’s eyebrows shot up in concern, “Is Alluka okay? Did something happen?”

“No, it’s not that. My _sister_ ,” Killua couldn’t help but snarl, “is fine. My really good friend Suzu is getting married, and I can’t miss it.”

“Is that all?” Gon was clearly relieved. “Killua is so forgetful. Remember when you almost forgot to retake the Hunter Exam?”

Killua looked very intently at his feet and laughed nervously. “Yeah, hah, but no, that’s not all, and if Alluka wasn’t such a…” _matchmaking idiot_ , “brat, this wouldn’t have happened, but she told Suzu that I was bringing a date.”

Gon smiled, confused, “It won’t be hard for you to bring a date at the last minute! I don’t know if you noticed all of the people staring when you got off the boat but I did and there were lots. Killua is really–”

“Alluka told her it was _you_ alright?? That we were… umm… _together_ … and she had this picture of us that she took a few weeks ago, right after we ran into each other, and Suzu just kind of lost it. She told me that she was happier about me bringing you than she was about her _own wedding_ and I didn’t even need to bring a gift now and I feel like if I tell her otherwise she’s going to turn into an even bigger busybody than she already is and…” he trailed off, face made exclusively of molten lava.

“ _That’s_ what’s bothering you?” Gon looked relieved. “Well I can just come then!”

“Wait… what?” Killua hadn’t even asked him. Hadn’t even _decided_ if he was going to ask, or if he was going to just tell the truth, or even just say nothing, and claim when he arrived that his precious boyfriend had come down with a very contagious bout of some kind of debilitating illness.

“I’d love to come with you as your date.”

“It would only be to shut her up, though,” Killua emphatically insisted. “Not really as my date. Just pretending and… stuff.”

“Of course, if that’s what you want,” Gon nodded then added thoughtfully, “You should still bring a gift, though…”

“Because, I mean, the idea of that, the two of us, I mean, you’re my best friend, I would never… it’s just because Alluka gets _ideas_ in her head, it’s my fault really, taking so long to get her out of that basement. She’s got all these romantic notions now, you wouldn’t believe them, but anyway Suzu is just as bad and yes, _of course_ , just to shut her up.”

“You are really cute when you ramble.”

Killua had been on the receiving end of some of Gon’s most enthusiastic compliments. The heartfelt admiration had been uncomfortable for him then, but years of living under the firestorm of Alluka’s love had desensitized him to outward displays of verbal affection.

At least, he thought they had. But Gon’s eyes were soft and his mouth was curled into a gentle half smile and he didn’t sound that drunk anymore and Killua’s face, already red, was probably melting off.

“What?!? Wh-why would you say something like that?”

“Well, if we’re going to do this, you might as well get used to it! Because, Killua, if I was your boyfriend… I would tell you things like that _all the time_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... um, like most instances of the fake relationship trope, this premise is completely and utterly ridiculous. But I don't care, because I thirst for this nonsense so desperately that I spent three days doing nothing but grading until the early hours of the morning so I could spend spring break writing it.
> 
> Don't fight people while drunk it never ends well.


	3. See your rugged hands and a silver knife

He expected Gon to wake up with at least a little bit of a hangover.

It was only fair, after all. If Killua couldn’t get drunk, at least he could laugh at the misfortune of the people who did. But as the bright morning sun and noisy birds urged him to open his eyes, instead of a snoring, sloppy Gon sleeping on the bed above him, he saw a bright-eyed, smiling Gon gazing at him affectionately from his position lying right next to him on the floor.

“Gon! What the hell?” Killua sat up quickly. He instantly regretted it. His mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls, and his head hurt like it used to when he first started transmuting his Nen into electricity.

“You still drool when you sleep, hm?” Gon was unfazed by his reaction.

“Everyone drools when they sleep. It’s normal. What is not normal is staring at unsuspecting people _while they are sleeping_.”

“Maybe,” Gon rolled onto his back and stretched his arms over his head, “but what if someone at this wedding asks me what you’re like when you sleep? I figured I should remind myself.”

Oh.

That.

He’d kind of just assumed, or more accurately, fervently hoped, that Gon would just forget about the whole thing in some kind of drunken memory lapse. He could just tell Suzu the truth, deal with the fallout, and be done with it. Why he hadn’t just done that in the first place was a mystery in hindsight. And now Gon, for some unknown reason, thought that this was a good idea. There was no way in hell he would be able to convince him otherwise.

Gon didn’t seem bothered at all by the thought of being coupled with another man, or in the least bit surprised that Alluka expected Killua would bring one to a wedding. Killua was relieved they didn’t have to have _that_ conversation, although maybe at some point they’d have to have a different one. Historically his dates hadn’t always been men and people tended to assume one way or the other when it was the most inconvenient.

“You don’t have to tell people the intimate details of your relationship, Gon! Don’t you know that?” 

Gon shrugged, “I’ve never been in that kind of a relationship before.”

“Wait… what? But you’d been on dozens of dates by the time we were twelve.”

“Ehhh, first off, those were all with women, so I wasn’t really interested by the time I started to care about stuff like that.”

Well, that was another conversation out of the way.

“I never saw any of them again anyway,” Gon pulled one of his legs up to his chest until his kneecap cracked in a way that he probably found very satisfying. “They were just silly little dates. And a little creepy, since I was just a kid, and they were mostly in their forties, I think. Well, other than Palm, but she’s my friend now, and she was just going through a really rough patch when we went out.”

A bandolier of kitchen knives flashed in Killua’s memory.

“You can say that again.”

The idea that Gon had never been involved with anyone startled him, though he didn’t quite know why. Maybe it was that he had always been more adept at developing friendships than Killua had ever been. It just stood to reason that he’d be more romantically experienced than him as well. Although, he supposed it was entirely possible that Gon had never found the time. He wasn't the sort of person to half-ass anything.

Granted, two people in five years was not a hell of a lot more in comparison. Especially when you considered that the second one hadn’t really even been much of a relationship. Just a week of spending time together and…

“So hold on,” he leaned back against Gon’s bed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Does that mean you’ve never…”

“I’ve never had sex with anybody,” Gon’s easy honesty didn’t falter in the slightest.

Something primal and unexpected flared up in Killua’s stomach, and he immediately tried to quash it. He didn’t have a very good grasp on what Gon had been doing with himself for the past five years, other than: A. losing his Nen; B. not dating anyone; and C. the vague “training,” that was the background context for basically every reference to the past five years. Yet here he was asking him if he was still a virgin, and getting irrationally happy when the answer was yes.

“But Killua has,” Gon continued, completely unconcerned and completely correct.

“Maybe let’s not talk about this,” Killua breathed, sense of excitement replaced by inexplicable dread. There was no reason for all of this anyway. He had spent little over a month with Gon after five years of no contact whatsoever. He was not ready to have such a highly intimate conversation at this point, even if he _had_ started it.

“Why? Do you regret it? And wouldn’t I know if I was your boyfriend?”

“Not necessarily!” Killua’s headache was getting exponentially worse and he just wanted to go back to sleep, but he stood up instead.

“I feel disgusting. I’m going to take a shower.”

  

The shower took a lot longer than expected, mostly due to the amount of time he spent berating himself for being such an idiot.  It was the sudden drop in temperature that alerted him to just how long he’d spent standing under the running water. The cold wasn’t unbearable, in fact it seemed to help his head, but he couldn’t very well spend the rest of the morning in the bathroom. He quickly rinsed his hair then took a step onto the bath mat, grabbing the first towel he saw. Swiping his hand across the fogged sink mirror, he took a long look at himself, drenched silver hair hanging lank over his eyes.

Was he going to let this happen?

It was obvious that Gon thought going to this wedding as his fake date, no his fake _boyfriend_ , was a good idea. There were a few potential reasons.

The first, and most unlikely was that Gon had a crush on him, but Killua found that laughably unbelievable. Even now with the reassuring certainty that yes, Gon was in fact attracted to men, it still didn’t seem likely. The Gon he knew would have made a move pretty much immediately after tackling him under the waterfall. Especially since he'd made it sound like he had spent _years_ trying to find the Zoldyck siblings. And he hadn’t. It stood to reason that if he wasn’t going to confess his feelings then, he was _never_ going to do it because they just didn’t exist. Gon was just too blunt and selfish to hide something like that.

As far as more sensible reasons went, it was possible that Gon assumed this level of wacky hijinks (because of course they were unavoidable) would be a quick shortcut to the easy intimacy of best friends. It was even conceivable that this was his roundabout effort to make up for the way things had played out after that, since his apology before they'd parted ways at the World Tree had been kind of blithe and a little thoughtless.

That much consideration seemed implausible, since Gon seemed to have no real concept of just how messed up that whole situation had been.

Not that Killua had been forthright about it, but still.

Most likely, Gon had no idea _why_ he thought this wedding was a good idea; he just did, and planned on plowing ahead, no worry about the consequences. In all probability, he just figured it would be fun.

But _Gon always gets his way_ was not an acceptable reason to do something anymore. His stubborn insistence would be a challenge, to be sure, but if Killua wanted out of this, he could get out. The thought made him sick, but he forced himself to acknowledge it: if Gon refused to accept that a situation should be avoided because it made Killua too uncomfortable, then Gon was not a person he should have around.

The question was, did it?

It wasn’t as though the two of them couldn’t carry out elaborate schemes together. They’d beat Greed Island. They’d escaped from the Genei Ryodan _twice_. They could think up an outrageous plot with the best of them. Pretending to be in a relationship at a wedding was not nearly as high stakes as virtually any situation they’d ever encountered.

But what was the point?

To keep a bunch of girls off of his back was the easy answer. But why did that even matter?

It absolutely didn’t.

It wasn’t like he couldn’t tell Suzu the truth. The reason he was going to her wedding at all was because she was important to him. Killua didn't have the resources or luxury to maintain surface friendships. Suzu had been his confidante for the past four years of isolation from any  friends his family would recognize. He could tell her. Even if she gave him a difficult time, his trust in her was not the issue.

The truth was, he didn’t want to tell her, _because_ they were so close. She was too perceptive, and there was absolutely no way he could be honest about this without acknowledging to himself the one thing he did not want to admit.

Somewhere along the line, maybe years ago, maybe just yesterday his feelings for Gon had grown outside of best friend territory. They were something else, now. And he wasn’t quite sure what.

And that?

That was terrifying.

“Where’s Mito-san?” he asked. He’d come downstairs after his shower and found only Gon and some sort of breakfast greeting him at the bottom of the stairs.

Gon was seated, looking eager to eat, smiling and shuffling his feet like an excited child. The table was set with two bowls of some steaming substance, a plate of assorted fruit, a small loaf of fresh bread, a cup of coffee for Gon, a cup of tea for himself, and a bunch of wildflowers as big as his head. There was no sign of anyone else having eaten at all.

“Mito-san left really early to help some friends down at the port,” Gon picked up the bread and broke it into two large chunks, sitting one by his bowl and the other at the place setting that was clearly intended for Killua. “She wanted to be busy today instead of dwelling on things.”

Killua nodded and sat, not certain the appropriate response in the face of frankly discussed grief. Gon seemed to have dealt with his, taking to heart the eulogy he’d given. Abe had been growing frail for quite some time, he had come to understand, and Gon was not the type of person who agonized over a long life well-lived. Mito, on the other hand, had lost her lifelong companion, someone she saw every single morning and every single night. It wasn’t surprising that she wanted to be busy. In fact, Killua would not be surprised if the woman were completely at sea.

He knew how she felt.

“It was nice of you to pick her flowers,” he said quietly, because it was. They were a cloud of white, and looked really pleasing against the wood grain of the table.

Gon shook his head, “Oh, those weren’t for Mito-san. She doesn’t really care for fresh flowers. She thinks they are a waste. They’re for you!”

“You thought… I would want flowers?” he raised his eyebrows high enough to reach his hairline, hoping that the incredulous response would slow down the blood that was rushing to his cheeks. Flowers were ridiculous. He definitely did not care about them, especially not enough to blush.

Definitely definitely not. 

Across the table, Gon visibly deflated. “Well… I thought they would make breakfast table look nicer. And I thought they’d look kinda like your hair if I put them all together in a bunch like that. And they do!” 

“So you thought you would serve me a Zoldyck themed breakfast? What’s are we eating? Arsenic waffles?”

“Killua makes it very hard for people to do nice things for him,” Gon was beginning to look more annoyed than disappointed.

“Well, they’re not bad or anything,” he admitted begrudgingly as he pulled out his chair. What looked to be a bowl of eggs stared up at him. “What is this anyway?”

Gon beamed, his annoyance forgotten in an instant, “They’re fisherman’s eggs. My specialty!”

The last time Gon had said that, his specialty had been a raw egg cracked over cooked rice. This didn’t look much different, actually, just three cooked eggs in a bowl.

“You have a specialty?” Killua poked at the white and yellow surface, revealing something decidedly not rice underneath.

“Well, for breakfast,” Gon acquiesced. “I have other specialties for other meals, I guess. Except for dessert. I don’t really like sweet things, neither does Mito-san, or… um, Grandma either,” he paused and swallowed, “Well… she didn’t. Since I never had a reason to practice, I’m not very good at making them.” He still hadn’t touched his food, and it was clear that he was waiting for Killua to try his first, so Killua dug his fork into the mystery breakfast and had a taste.

“There’s always a reason for sweet things,” he said with his mouth full of a little bit of egg and a lot of some kind of extremely flavorful fish.

It was pretty good, actually

“I guess I could learn,” Gon responded carefully, dipping what appeared to be his half of the bread into his own bowl without taking his eyes off of Killua as he chewed.

Killua took another bite, forcing himself to go slowly so as not to seem overeager. “I’m not very good at cooking. That’s more Alluka’s thing.”

Gon made a face, “Killua, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Your breakfast yesterday was great!”

“I suppose it was alright,” he shrugged, before shoving the fork in his mouth again as quickly as seemed appropriate. The winsome, hopeful look in Gon’s eyes had turned more frantic as he unabashedly waited for some kind of feedback. “I mean, I can do it, but she never lets me because she’s always working on some kind of experiment. Since she always sleeps in, I only ever get to make breakfast.” He picked up his chunk of bread to dip in the eggs and realized it was still warm. Had Gon _baked_ this himself?

He could feel the other man’s eyes on him as he dispassionately gnawed off a piece.

It was so damn delicious, and he was not going to give.

Gon took a frustrated breath and began, “So, as a breakfast expert, what do you–”

“She says hi, by the way,” Killua interrupted. “Alluka that is. She texted me while I was in the shower. She’s really enjoying her new school, and–”

“Killua!” Gon was trying to be stern, but he mostly sounded whiny.

“Hm?” Killua sipped his tea.

“Do you like the breakfast?”

“You are so fucking full of it,” he chuckled. “Of course it’s good, you dumbass. Congratulations on learning to cook at least one dish.”

Gon relaxed into a smirk. They continued eating in a companionable silence, sounds of the ocean and birds filtering in through the open windows. It was so comfortable that Killua almost let himself forget the looming logistical and interpersonal considerations.

Almost. There was just no point in delaying the inevitable.

“I’m gonna, uh, have to get a boat out of here tomorrow,” he muttered.

Gon sat his fork down with a gravitas that made Killua’s heart thump uncomfortably. It was going to happen now, the serious conversation about feelings where he had to be honest about them and he didn’t know what to say because he didn’t even understand them himself. Now that Gon was back in his life, he felt angrier at him than he had ever felt. But under that was something deeper, a longing to see him again that felt so desperate that acknowledging it to himself at all made him want to run away from everyone and everything he'd ever known. But how was he supposed to explain that to anyone, let alone Gon who was willing to stand his ground against the very inevitability of death itself.

“So,” the man in question took a deep breath, “when should I come?”

He just barely stopped his jaw from dropping as Gon kept on talking.

“Even though she keeps saying we need to go, I’m going to stay with Mito-san for as long as I can. I’m definitely coming, though. Maybe I’ll bring her along! Will Alluka be there? Oh, also where is it? And what should I bring to wear? A tux? I don’t have a tux. Should I buy one? Or is that something you rent maybe? I remember we rented them in Yorknew. Also do you think I need a haircut? I’ve kept it this way for awhile, but maybe I should try it even shorter. I could have Mito-san cut it before I leave. I might look too much like Ging then, though. Does your friend like fruit? There’s a lot of good stuff in season, I could bring some!”

Killua blinked.

Gon looked at him expectantly, waiting for some kind of response.

“You want to bring a fruit basket halfway across the world?” was all Killua could think to say, halfway between bemusement and utter annoyance.

“So it’s that far then?” Gon pulled a thoughtful face. “I guess that means I have to leave in the middle of the week. Unless it’s on a weekday. Do people get married on weekdays?”

“Gon, I don’t know! Suzu is the first person I know who’s gotten engaged!”

“That’s not true, Shoot got married last year to a really nice girl. Knuckle was his best man, but he had to leave in the middle of the ceremony because he couldn’t stop crying. Morel tried to make his speech for him, but then he couldn’t stop crying either…”

“Well, I didn’t know that happened because I was in hiding from my psychotic family!” Killua shouted angrily. How many other things had he fucking missed?

“I know! You don’t have to be so defensive,” Gon shouted right back.

“I’m not defensive! You’re being ridiculous with all these questions!”

“So where is it?” Gon managed to sound excited and pissed all at once. “And is it going to be really fancy?”

“Can we just finish eating?!?”

Gon smiled wickedly, and without another word began shoveling food into his face as fast as a human being possibly could.

Killua snorted, “If you think you’re going to turn this into an eating contest, you're wrong.”

Not stopping for a moment, Gon’s eyes narrowed in what was unmistakably a challenge.

“For the love of…” Killua stuffed what remained of his half of the bread in his mouth.

Ten minutes later, after the violent reappearance of Gon’s specialty for both of them, breakfast was officially over. Killua made it back into the room first. He was seated, carefully drinking a glass of water when Gon returned from the upstairs bathroom, still looking a little green. 

“That was a bad idea,” he laughed weakly. “Should I make some more food?”

“No,” Killua sat down his glass heavily. “Do not do that.” 

  

“So I’m guessing you should leave in the middle of the week,” Killua said above the muted clink of the dishes in the sink. “I’ll show you the route you should take before I leave. I doubt anyone will track you, but in case they do, it’ll be really easy to lose them. Even my brother couldn’t find you on those trails.”

The kitchen felt smaller than it had yesterday. Gon’s shoulder kept brushing against his arm, and he could feel the contact all the way in his toes. It was too hot. They needed to open a window.

“Will he try?”

Killua swallowed hard. Gon hadn’t brought up Illumi until now. He’d just assumed he’d known. It felt like everyone knew.

Apparently not.

“Rumor is he’s dead,” he said flatly, not looking up from the glass he was washing.

Gon sat down the dishtowel, looking very serious. “I heard a Zoldyck was paid to take out the rest of the Genei Ryodan, but I thought it was just… Killua, are you–?”

“I have no idea if it’s true,” he cut off Gon’s concern. “No one in the family’s made any real contact in five years. I’ve only talked to lawyers and some new butler in pretty controlled conditions, and that was before all this. Maybe I was just good at hiding us, and they tried. It’s hard to say.”

Gon didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to ask. Killua knew what he had to be wondering because the same thing ran through his own head incessantly.

“Alluka, she is… well… her and Nanika can take care of themselves long enough for me to get to her school if my folks decide to host a mandatory family reunion. Even if he’s not dead, Illumi’s needles won’t work on her. With Nanika, it’s like… a manipulator can’t take over the body of someone who is already being manipulated by someone else. And because there are two of them in one body…”

“You’re really worried, Killua,” Gon tentatively put his hand on his shoulder. The heat from his fingers was searing.

“It’s just habit, that’s all,” Killua pulled away, chanting the mantra he had been reciting all summer. “You’ve got to let people go, right? Let them do their own thing? I can’t always force her to be with me; it’s just like keeping her in the dungeon. She wanted to go away to this school so bad.”

Gon bit his lip, “Not just about Alluka. You’re worried about Illumi. He might have been crazy and pretty terrible, but he was still your brother.”

Killua turned the water on full blast. “If he’s dead, he’s dead. Occupational hazard. It’s his fault, really, if he took such a stupid job. My dad told us not to go after those people.”

“Okay,” Gon sighed.

They washed up in silence for a while before Gon changed the subject completely. He wanted to surprise Mito with a nice family dinner, and would Killua help him?

Of course he would.

Family stuff was important.

  

Three hours later, they were fishing. Stillllll fishing. Well, Gon was fishing, and Killua was watching him fish. The first hour had been fine, a back-and-forth barrage of stories that they both had, for various reasons, felt uncomfortable telling around Alluka.

After hearing Gon talk, Killua felt a renewed respect for Zushi, who had agonized through a particularly awkward and oily puberty. Like he did with everything else, the martial artist had persevered, and now he was apparently so popular that he had to beat off admirers with a stick. There was a whole collection of them who did a daily vigil at the base of Heaven’s Arena, hoping to catch a glimpse of the longest-seated floormaster in the tower’s history.

Most of Killua's own stories were about Bisky, Leorio, and Knov since they were the only three other people Gon knew that Killua had seen at all. He tried to push away the sense of missing out that had been festering ever since they’d reconnected, but it was difficult. There was no question, none at all, that Alluka had been worth the seclusion, but that didn’t mean that hearing Gon’s adventures without him didn’t sting. As the time went on, and the heat of the day grew, he found himself more and more caught up in his own thoughts - an internal battle to get over the indisputable fact that he'd missed out on some really fun times. Externally, he and Gon had gradually fallen into what seemed like a companionable silence.

Until Gon abruptly spoke up, making it obvious that something had been on his mind for awhile. 

“Killua?” he began nervously, looking very intently at the lake.

Gon and nervous were never a good combination, especially now. There was no reason at all to be nervous. Killua figured Gon had to be in his element, legs in that gross lake up to his knees, fishing rod in hand, bright sun reflecting off of the murky water, cicadas chirping like crazy. If he was nervous, that meant he was curious about Killua’s emotions, and probably this stupid wedding.

“Uh… yeah?” Killua licked his lips. There was nothing to talk about. It was just a simple arrangement to reach a goal. That was it.

“Why didn’t you ever write back?” Gon turned and his eyes were a liquid gold in the searing sunlight. “To any of my emails? I sent um… I sent a whole lot.”

Killua sighed in relief. This was the least emotional thing he could possibly imagine.

“Because you’re an idiot.”

“What?” Gon was flabbergasted and more than a little offended, but he didn’t disturb the fishing line at all. “I mean, my writing wasn’t very good at first, but I got a lot better! That was another thing Zushi made me do. He thought good grammar was really important for some–”

“No, I mean, we’re both idiots.”

“Eh???”

“So, you sent me and Alluka that video of the swans, but when I looked closer at the thing, I realized you’d sent that one message to pretty much everyone else we ever met. Some of those people, like Leorio, had _publicly listed_ email addresses.”

Gon clearly had no idea what he was getting at.

“You might as well have sent it to my grandad, Gon! Milluki is a lazy ass, but he is a _really_ good hacker. When I realized that he could find us just by hacking Leorio’s email, I never looked at that address again. I even had to buy a new computer. I didn’t get online at all until we we’d run pretty much halfway around the world to get away. By then, I couldn’t send you anything because I knew your address was being watched, and I had no way to tell you because _you_ were probably being watched. My family sends messages by falcon for a reason, you know.”

“I _am_ an idiot,” Gon stared into the middle distance, dumbfounded.

“Well, I didn’t realize it at first either. I could have just warned you at the World Tree, and then it would have been fine. Of course, you’d have needed a better username than _jajankenguygon.._.”

“ _Jajankenguy_ was taken!” Gon managed to vehemently protest without wiggling the line in the slightest.

“I’m just surprised there’s some other jajankenguy out there. Maybe you should fight him...”

The zip of the line pulling taut granted jajakenguy, whoever he was, a temporary respite from harassment. Whatever was on Gon’s hook pulled so hard and so quickly that smoke rose from the point where the line rubbed against the pole. Gon was on his feet in an instant, gracefully and effortlessly pulling an enormous, bright blue fish out of the water.

But his shoulders sunk in disappointment the moment it came into clear view.

“You again? You’re even bigger this time, but you should stay here!” he huffed, cutting the line with a scissor-shaped burst of Nen from his fingertips. The motion was fluid and easy – just as natural as pulling the fish out of the water had been. Killua was transfixed by the way Gon’s forearm shifted with the motion. He was wearing a loose-fitting t-shirt and shorts that went down almost to his knees. The clothing hid the majority of his muscular development from sight, but Killua knew it was all still there. Gon’s arms alone were enough to push him into an existential crisis.

It took at least fifteen other fish until Gon caught one that he felt was appropriate for Mito’s special dinner. By then the sun was high in the sky, and Killua was wearing an enormous hat he’d made out of banana leaves. Gon didn’t seem to be affected by the sunlight in the slightest. He had browned even darker, more tiny freckles appearing all over the bridge of his nose. Killua expected his own skin to curl up and ignite like burning paper if he sat in the glare any longer.

“Okay, now we just need to cook this right before Mito gets home,” Gon stood, brandishing the fish by the gills.

“When’s that?” Killua asked blearily. It was so unbearably hot. He needed to make an entire suit out of banana leaves to keep the sun off. He was almost to the point of jumping into the disgusting lake water just to cool down.

“I don’t know!” was the cheery response. “So we should go home and do it now.”

“Won’t it get cold if she takes too long?” Killua stood slowly.

“Hm, yeah. You’re right. But it needs to be a surprise, so…”

 

And that was how Killua found himself down at Whale Island’s major port, wandering through the fish mongering stalls until he found Mito Freecss.

“Keep her busy until dinner, Killua!” he’d been ordered.

He liked Mito a lot, of course. She was the most motherly person he knew by a long shot. But he didn’t know what exactly you were supposed to do with mothers - good ones at least. The only other two even remotely maternal figures he'd ever had were his own mother, and Bisky. Neither seemed like particularly good examples; he’d stabbed the former, and been punched by the latter at least a dozen times. Actually, Bisky would probably do it again if she heard him calling her maternal.

He found Mito completely immersed in the task of cleaning several large, ocean-caught fish. She was wearing gloves and an apron and they were both absolutely covered in blood. Killua watched, awestruck, as she effortlessly sliced the filleting knife through the flesh of one fish after another. There was no pause in her motions; she handled the knife as expertly as anyone he had ever seen, including his own father. Using Gyo, he saw the faint glimmer of Nen in her hands, going so far as to envelop the knife.

Everyone always just assumed that Gon’s natural talent was genetic, that it had come from Ging or even maybe his biological mother. But how much of that was a product of how and where he was raised? It was clear that Mito herself was a well of untapped potential. Killua wondered if Gon had ever thought to look.

“Hi Mito-san.”

The flow of her aura was interrupted and the knife flew out of her hand, skittering against the cutting board.

“Oh, Killua! You startled me!” she drew her fist to her chest, leaving another bloody smear on the apron.

“Sorry for interrupting. I was just… wondering when you were going to be finished. I need some help picking out a birthday present for my sister.”

Alluka’s birthday was in the winter, and he had named Nanika in the spring. But Mito didn’t know that.

“Hm. What does she like?” Mito pulled off her gloves and untied her apron.

 _Meddling in people_ _’_ _s romantic lives?_

“Uh, normal girl stuff, I guess,” he played as dumb as possible. Alluka liked cooking and dance and chemistry and ghost stories and epic romances and any color as long as it was bright. She insisted on buying a piece of local art everywhere they went, and they scoured the most remote areas imaginable to make certain what they found was authentic. “I think she likes art, but, you know, the real kind, not touristy stuff. I don’t know where I’d find that here, and Gon’s no help.”

“He didn’t come?”

“Well…” Killua picked a random training activity that he knew Gon did regularly, “we were meditating, but I got bored. I don’t think he noticed I left. He’ll figure it out eventually.”

Mito laughed, picking up the bucket of fillets she had cleaned and hefting it up to her hip. Based on the contents, and the way she shifted her weight, it had to weigh at least eighty pounds, but she held it easily with her hip and a single arm.

“He does that a lot nowadays. Well, I’m finished here – I was just cleaning some fish for one of the local restaurants. We have a small cruise ship coming in this afternoon; tourists tend to all order the same thing. Would you like to get some lunch and then we can look around?”

“I… um… sure, Mito-san. That would be okay.”

Mito reached up with her free hand and squeezed his shoulder.

“It will be nice to catch up, Killua. It’s hard to believe you’re the same little boy who came to my house needing a haircut.”

Her smile was as wide as her son’s.

 

“So, then, Alluka said, ‘ _Why not just buy all five?_ ’”

Mito dissolved into laughter.

They had finished eating lunch an hour ago, but still hadn’t left their table in front of the restaurant. Mito knew the waiter, and the man didn’t ask them to leave, or even bring out a bill. He just left snacks and drinks with a smile and occasionally a gentle touch on Mito’s forearm that could have been comforting, or could have been something else.

“She sounds like a real handful,” Mito wiped her eyes. “Is it just the two of you? Well, and Nanika.”

“Yeah, until she went off to school. We lived with my old teacher for about a year, but she never wanted kids, and doesn’t like to stay in one place too long. After awhile she just went off on some adventure and gave us the house. It’s still technically hers, but she only uses it to store some of her stuff. I guess we’re all just using it to store our stuff now.”

“That was pretty nice of her,” Mito sipped her water. “Especially if she never wanted children.”

Killua had been mindlessly sketching on a napkin since they took away his plate. He was a bit lost in the process, but Mito didn’t seem to care. She just let him talk as he drew. 

“Actually, Alluka needs to go to an endocrinology clinic sometimes, so I had to get legal custody a few years ago so they would let her in. It wasn’t too hard, since my Hunter license makes me an adult. I thought it would be tough to get my parents to sign over legal rights but…” his voice caught, and he focused harder on the drawing, “they didn’t even come to court, just sent a butler with the paperwork all signed. Not even one I knew.”

“Oh, that must have been hard.”

“Yeah… well, it’s hard being someone’s brother, but also kind of her dad. I don’t know anything about taking care of a kid.”

“Killua, did Gon ever tell you how old I am?” 

He shook his head.

“I’m thirty-two,” she said softly.

Sitting down the pencil, he bit his lip. “That means you were…”

“Thirteen when Ging left. Gon wasn’t quite a baby, but a two-year-old is still a handful. I didn’t know anything about taking care of a toddler. I’d never even changed a diaper before. But there was no keeping Ging. Grandma was sick a lot that year, and I couldn’t let her strain herself even more being someone’s primary caregiver, especially when Ging was maybe never coming back. And I suppose I was worried that… I… I just didn’t want that tiny little boy to ever feel like an orphan.”

She paused and lifted her glass to her lips, a slight tremor in her hands.

“I know how terrifying it must have been for you, Killua. How alone you’ve felt.”

He picked up his pencil and returned to the sketch, hand moving at a furious pace.

“There were all these decisions to make,” he said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. “Medical ones. Things we couldn’t wait too long to do, but would never be able to take back either. Leorio helped, but he was one of her doctors. It was Alluka’s choice, really, but _I_ was the adult, even though it was _her_ body and I’m only three years older. If something ends up going wrong, if she regrets it…”

Mito reached out and stilled his hand.

“Is your sister happier now?”

He nodded. In every way it had seemed like the right decision, but the responsibility to make it still felt so heavy.

“I can’t say how the future will play out for sure, but you’re still going to make mistakes, Killua,” Mito squeezed his fingers gently. It was something only Alluka had ever done before, but he didn’t stop her, or pull his hand away. “That doesn’t mean you’re doing a bad job. Caring for another person is never a perfect process. It doesn’t matter if you’re family, or someone’s friend, or even if you’re…”

He shifted in his seat, the movement revealing the sketch he’d absentmindedly created. He hadn’t really even considered what he’d been drawing, but there Gon was, pulling the fish from the water, smiling wide enough to break the world.

“…well, I’m sure you’ll figure that out for yourself,” Mito finished, with a quiet smile.

  

It wasn’t that the quilt he’d bought for Alluka was heavy. In fact, carrying it would have been easier if it had weighed five hundred pounds. Instead it was just bulky and awkward and light enough to keep catching in the wind. The impossibly old woman he'd bought it from didn’t own a shop. There hadn’t been any sort of bag to put the thing in, and it was too large to fold properly. Every five steps during the walk up the hill to the house it blew in his face. By the time they arrived he was ready to throw it into the next available swamp.

The discovered Gon, seated on the stoop and eager to the point of impatience. He looked exactly like a person who was about to surprise someone. Behind the quilt, Killua rolled his eyes.

“What’s going on, Gon?” Mito asked in a knowing voice.

Gon had blown it, after all of Killua’s efforts to keep her away. Mito was not that easily to fool, and he wasn’t even trying.

“Killua and I just had a really nice afternoon,” she continued, “even though it started with him just trying to keep me from coming home.”

“What?” Killua squawked.

Mito turned to him and winked, “Sorry, Killua, but saying Alluka liked ‘normal girl stuff, I guess,’” she said in his voice, “was clearly a lie – you know exactly what she likes, I am certain of it. And then when you told me that Gon didn’t know anything about island artisans… well, he probably knows more than I do.”

Killua was torn between being deeply embarrassed but also impressed at how well the older woman could imitate his voice.

“Surprise!” Gon yelled happily, apropos of nothing.

“You’ve got to show her first, idiot!” Killua shouted, just as the quilt blew over his face for the five thousandth time.

Gon grabbed both of their hands and pulled them inside the door.

He hadn’t just cooked the fish.

He’d cooked pretty much everything in the house.

Fish, roasted vegetables, some kind of soup, three different salads, a roast duck, and on and on and on. Enough food to feed thirty-five people at least, and since Killua was leaving tomorrow, he had no idea what the remaining two Freecss were going to do with all of this.

“Oh… Gon,” Mito said softly.

“I was going to make us some fish, but then I got bored waiting, so I made all Mito-san’s favorites!”

The woman smiled a shaky smile, but her chest had already started heaving. She dropped Gon’s hand to cover her face with her own.

“Mito-san?”

The woman collapsed to her knees, exploding into a stuttering cough that Killua knew well: the kind of noise that a person who has maintained perfect control through deep emotional agony makes when she finally can’t hold it in anymore.

Gon was still holding his hand, but he dropped to the floor as well, pulling Killua after him. He skidded on his knees next to the two of them, completely uncertain as to what to do.

“Shhh, Mito-san, Mito-san no, no, no,” Gon babbled, wrapping the woman in his arms and pressing his forehead to hers all while still holding on to Killua’s hand. The motion pulled Killua forward, and his arms fell around both of them too. Mito was shaking like a leaf. She was so tiny, smaller than Alluka, and much smaller than the two of them. He didn’t know what to do, so he just stayed there, hoping that maybe feeling warm and surrounded helped Mito feel better.

It was impossible to also ignore that this was the most he and Gon had touched in five years, or maybe even ever, if you didn’t count the times when they’d been sparring, or one of them, mostly Gon, had been unconscious. His body was almost completely flush against Gon's. He could feel the shorter man's heart beating fast with anxiety, and Killua unconsciously squeezed both Gon and Mito tighter. 

“I’m going away for awhile, Gon,” Mito finally said. Her voice was muffled and hoarse, but Killua could understand her well enough. “Tomorrow. I need to travel for awhile, to see the world. I’m sorry, I don’t want to leave you in this empty house alone but I need to do this.”

Killua only realized that his forehead had been resting against Gon's head when the shorter man stood and their skulls smashed together. He fell backwards, but Gon didn’t notice at all because he was too busy picking Mito up and spinning her around.

“Gon!” Mito choked out, still crying a little, “You’re so happy! I didn’t expect…”

He sat her down for a moment, and stepped back, only to jump forward and pull her into another embrace, burying his head in her neck.

“Mito-san is coming back, right?” he said into her shoulder.

Mito smiled, “This is my home, Gon. I could never stay away for long.”

“Then why wouldn’t I be excited?” he held her at an arm's length to look into her face. “Mito-san, you deserve to see the world! And we can go together!”

Killua didn’t expect the floor to dissolve underneath him, but it did. It took a huge amount of self-control not to shudder, which was ridiculous, because clearly Mito needed Gon much more than he did at this point. He would go with her and that was that. It was even a convenient excuse to pass on to Suzu.

Gon sends his regrets, but he really needs to be with his family right now.

But Mito shook her head, and Gon’s face dropped.

“Maybe in a few months, Gon. But I think, for now, I’d like to go alone.”

Gon nodded, and his reaction was, for once, hard to read. But whatever he was feeling, it was clear he understood, because he took Mito’s hand and squeezed it. Killua stood up, quietly. The floor was back, but so was an overwhelming sense of guilt.

“Anyway,” Mito continued as though she could read his mind, “you two boys need some time together too, don’t you think?”

 

Once they finally extradited themselves from the seemingly endless series of hugs and sat to eat, Mito was not particularly eager to divulge where she was going, and it eventually became apparent why.

“Well, um, Ging he, um, gave me this key to a cabin he has in the mountains on the Azian Continent. It felt like some kind of apology for how much he’s… well, I didn’t want to take anything from him, especially something that would cost so much money, but he insists that he already owns it and it’s empty almost all of the time.”

“You should squeeze him for all the money he’s worth,” Killua snorted.

Gon nodded, “Mito-san, Ging has so much money it’s almost embarrassing.”

“Yesterday he gave me two hundred thousand jenny for an old shirt and pants,” Killua added. 

Mito growled, “Does he even know how many people on this island _alone_ could use that kind of money? That man!” She slammed her fist down onto the table for emphasis, shaking the entire house to its foundation.

Killua looked at Gon, who didn’t seem shocked in the slightest.

“It doesn’t matter, I’m not taking his money. I’ve been saving for years, since Gon was young, but he never needed it to go to school and,” she turned to Gon and glared, “since you refuse to take it from me, I thought I would spend a small bit of it on a little trip.”

“Mito-san, I have too much money too,” Gon muttered, mostly to himself.

“Yes, Gon, but you never know what might happen! Anyway, after my parents died, Grandma used to tell me stories about the snow where she grew up – she actually moved to Whale Island as a teenager. So when Ging offered, I had to say yes. I’ve never even seen snow before and the photographs were so beautiful.”

They spent the rest of the evening reminiscing, starting off with Gon’s childhood, then moving on to Mito’s. Killua tried on several occasions to give them some family space, but every time he stood to go upstairs. Mito grabbed his hand, pulling him back and asking him impossible-to-ignore questions, like what Alluka and Nanika’s first words had been and what kind of ridiculous antics Bisky got up to in her spare time.

Killua could have spent the entire night talking about those alone.

It was well past midnight when they finally said their goodnights. Mito-san hugged Killua last, murmuring something in his ear that filled his stomach with butterflies.

Back in Gon’s room, the two of them packed in a thoughtful, companionable silence after deciding with surprisingly little fuss that they would both leave together in the morning. Killua found himself feeling, for the moment at least, comfortable with the entire situation. When he came back to the room after brushing his teeth, he found Gon splayed across his bed, fast asleep on top of the covers. Killua lifted up his friend’s legs and put them on the mattress, then covered him with only loose blanket in the room.  He unrolled his own bedroll, only to realize that he had given Gon the blanket that he was supposed to use.

He went to bed without one.

While drifting off, he played the final whispered words that Mito had told him over and over in his mind.

 _“I_ _’_ _m so glad you_ _’_ _re a part of our little stitched-together family, Killua.”_

That night, wrapped up in one of his turtlenecks, he slept better than he had in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So just observing this fandom for the brief time I have, I've noticed that headcanons fly around like crazy, to the point where as soon as I write something, I notice a headcanon about it right afterwards. I promise I'm not stealing anyone's ideas without crediting them - it's just a case of recombinant conceptualization.
> 
> Also, in reference to Alluka, this is probably the only time I mention anything related to her decision to have hrt (which is not a decision all transgender teenagers make, or even have the freedom to make), but if you defy canon and insist she is anything other than a trans girl, gtfo.


	4. I'll take the lie

“You really don’t want to do that,” Killua said, almost apologetically.

The man was enormous; all prison tattoos, septum piercings, and knotted muscles. He was using said muscles to restrain Killua, pressing a savage-looking knife to his throat with a steady hand. It was the hand of someone who had murdered enough times to not give a fuck anymore. The smell of blood hung heavy in the air, and the man’s face was flecked with it.

The whole situation was rapidly becoming a real pain in the ass.

With Gon’s proclivity for seeking out dangerous situations, traveling with him had been bound to become a minor disaster sooner or later. In this case, it only took getting off the ship and hiking for a little less than half a day until trouble found them.

Or, more accurately, they'd found trouble. Gon had smelled blood, a lot of it he'd insisted. So they’d run fifteen minutes through almost impossible terrain, all in a direction completely opposite to where they needed to go. But there was no arguing against Gon's hunch that something wasn’t right, and in this situation, Killua wouldn't have thought to protest.    

“I dunno who you think you are, you scrawny kid, but you’re gonna have a lot less to bitch about if you don’t shut up,” the poacher snarled, tightening his grip and pushing the blade into Killua’s skin. “Now tell me how you two know about this operation, and I maybe won’t cut out those sparkly blue eyes…”

“I see where you’re going with this,” Killua yawned. “If your heart's set on killing me, you might as well try now. I’m telling you, my friend has kind of a short fuse. I can’t promise he won’t beat you half to death if he gets back from chasing down your buddy and sees me hurt. Between that and the animal abuse, you’re not ingratiating yourself much.”

“I don’t care about your little friend, kid. He's prolly dead already. Now if I gotta ask one more time, I’m gonna get nasty.” 

For emphasis, a thin stream of blood slid down Killua’s neck to collect in the hollow of his collarbone. The pool spilled over, dribbling down onto the lilac of his shirt.

He sighed angrily over the almost involuntary spark and flash of ozone. This was all such a hassle.

“My sister _just bought that_ for me,” he admonished the unconscious man.

 

He had ripped the doors off almost all of the cages holding the captive female river seals and their young by the time Gon returned. The Enhancer was cradling the last tiny seal pup in one arm while using the other to drag a poacher by his collar across the forest floor.

“Sorry,” he said sincerely to the limp body, trying to lean the man upright next to his companion. “I wouldn’t normally just drag you like that, but this little girl was really scared. Also you weren't being very nice at all.”

The pure white pup bleated pathetically. From one of the remaining cages there was a frantic cry in response.

“There’s her mom!” Gon shouted, dropping the man altogether and hopping across the mangled remains of the cages Killua had destroyed. Without a second glance he drew his Nen into a blade that surrounded his fingers and sliced the metal bars completely in half. Reunited with her mother, the baby seal immediately began to nurse while Gon looked on happily.

“Killua,” Gon asked brightly, “I thought you were interrogating him?”

“Eh, I was but then he ruined my shirt. He’ll wake up soon enough, then I figure we can find out what we need. I told him you were terrifying, so we can just play that up some.”

Gon nodded, gently scratching the back of the nursing mother. His face turned grim as he looked over the terrible slaughter of the enormous shoremaster and almost half of the pod's weaker males.

"These seals are worth a lot of money,” he said. “Those guys are probably doing more poaching than just today, especially with all these cages. I wish we'd got here sooner.”

“What do they sell them for?” Killua asked, watching the ungainly animals he had freed waddle their way down the riverbank where they gracefully slid into the water like chubby mermaids.

“Umm, their skins, especially the babies, and also to make perfume I think,” Gon was offering his hand to the baby seal. She had finished eating and was now staring curiously from the safety of her mother’s side. “Can’t you smell them? That musk is pretty rare.”

“It just smells like animal to me,” Killua shrugged, jumping out of the way of one of the few remaining bulls as it charged him. “Maybe more like animal than usual, but… ”

A groan from the man he had stunned stopped his speculation.

He and Gon moved in close, crouching in front of their once-assailants as the larger one began to wake.

“The fuck… happened…?” the man moaned, slowly opening his eyes.

“You ruined my shirt,” Killua said flatly. “And my friend came back.”

“Boyfriend, actually,” Gon ruffled Killua’s hair, looking very pleased with himself. He'd insisted that they practice the whole couple act in front of other people. For the sake of being convincing when it really mattered Killua had agreed.

He’d thought he'd just need to steel himself against a relentless barrage of compliments, but he had been wrong. Instead of talking even more than usual about how wonderful he was, Gon had started to touch Killua _constantly;_ hand on his shoulder, nails gently scratching his back, fingers in his hair, even wrapping his arms around him if he caught the Transmuter with his guard down. It had been embarrassing enough to tolerate in front of the passengers and crew of an entire ship. But performing in front of a duo of bloodthirsty criminals hell-bent on murdering them took things to an entirely different level.

“G-Gon! Could you _not_ right now?”

His only response was an affectionate shoulder bump.

“Bunch… of… fucking…” the man began, then dissolved into a cough. “Should’ve sliced your damn throat.”

"Like you could," Killua snorted. There was no point in playing weak anymore.

But Gon didn't seem to find it as funny.

“You tried to kill him?” he asked, low voice dropping into a register that turned it to gravel. His aura, which Killua had only glimpsed a few times since they’d reunited flashed to life and then immediately began darkening.

Gon was probably faking it. Killua had told the poacher that Gon was scary, and now he was making him believe it. He wouldn't lose it over something like this. There was no way. Gon had watched dozens of assailants at the very least threaten the lives of people he cared about, and he had never gotten this angry when no one was even hurt.

But Killua’s hands began to tremble anyway, so he shoved them into his pockets.

“You killed all of those seals,” Gon’s voice grew in volume, “took the babies away from their mothers even though they would starve, and then _tried,_ ” a fierce wind sprung up from nowhere, making the branches sway frantically, " _to hurt,"_ the dark aura began to block out the daylight, _“KILLUA?_ ” the darkness burst into waves of flame.

Maybe it was a consequence of being electrocuted a few minutes prior, but the man pissed himself before he passed out from sheer terror.

"You should have told me you were going to take it that far," Killua said in the most even voice he could muster. "That guy couldn't even see your Nen."

Gon’s aura had calmed and retracted the instant the man fell unconscious. He _had_ been faking it. Reaching out to pull Killua's hand out of his pocket, he chuckled a little, eyes full of remorse. "I'm sorry, Killua. I kind of lost my temper um... when he talked about hurting you like that. It made me want to scare him pretty bad."

"He's out cold!” Killua pulled his hand away, turning his face so Gon couldn't see him blushing. “You don't have to be so grabby!"

 

Of course, the poacher confessed the extent of his operation when he woke up. He also confessed to things that had absolutely nothing to do with poaching. Things that weren’t even illegal. He admitted to disappointing his dear sweet mother, and not knowing how to swim.

Eventually, Gon crossed his legs and sat next to him, nodding sympathetically as the man listed his sins in no particular order.

“It sounds like you’ve really needed someone to talk to Poacher-san,” Gon patted his shoulder gently.

What Killua needed was something to do with himself, to calm his shaking hands. He started to treat the wounds of the still-unconscious poacher that Gon had chased down. The small, lithe man was covered by a variety of lacerations, some fairly deep. Most looked like they were either a result of recklessly driving his ATV through dense forest, or from being dragged by Gon once he'd been caught. There was a slight swelling and a deep purple bruise on his right temple, whether it was from Gon or from driving into a tree, Killua couldn’t tell. He wrapped up his head, and cleaned the rest of his injuries, bandaging the ones that were still bleeding.

He wasn’t particularly concerned about being gentle; the man seemed likely to stay unconscious even if Killua set him on fire.  

Eventually, he ran out of injuries to treat, so he began dismantling what remained of the cages so they couldn't be used again. If they had been alone, he would have fused them together to the point of being unusable, but he didn’t want to reveal anything about his abilities to the conscious poacher, who still had no real idea how he had been knocked out. Killua wanted to keep it that way.

Taking a few of the cages behind a dense bunch of foliage, he focused his aura, transmuting a small amount of it into a high concentration of oxygen. Biting his lip to focus, he used emission to hold the gas together and in place a half an inch away from his finger. A spark and it was lit, altering the state of the gas until it turned to a focused stream of plasma. With this makeshift torch he began slicing the bars into thinner pieces. After that was done, he altered the composition of the gas once more with acetylene, allowing more to escape so the temperature fell. With this flame he welded each piece into a link, forming a long chain.

The level of concentration needed to do detailed work pulled his mind away from memories of a waterfall of black hair flowing backwards into the sky, and wine-red eyes actively seeking death.

The chain was thirty feet long when Gon finally stopped him.

 

After making a call to the closest legal authorities, they were on the road again, leaving the poachers chained to two large boulders near the banks of the river. Killua stunned each man so even if they broke the chains, which seemed impossible, they would be too dizzy and disoriented to run off. The seals had since moved off, but their stench remained, and it seemed fitting to leave the two criminals in the reek.

Gon had insisted on leaving nearly all their provisions, as well as two full water pouches and both of their bedrolls. When Killua complained, he said they could keep each other warm if it got too cold, which made him so flustered that he just stormed off to refill their only remaining canteen.

The poachers had the audacity to laugh at his embarrassment.

For the rest of that day’s hike, he practiced using Enhancement so he could stay warm by himself, but it wasn't a skill he had ever developed. The effort was enough to be visibly draining, which meant that there was no way he could convince Gon just to keep going through the night.

They eventually made their camp deep in the forest on two high boughs radiating out of the trunk of a large tree, one about five inches higher than the other. Killua took the higher and Gon the lower and each of them balanced as he slept, back against the tree trunk. It was elevated enough that they could avoid any hassle from any other members of the poachers’ gang, or the soon-to-arrive members of law enforcement.

Killua fell asleep quickly, and didn’t wake up from the chill at all.

When he opened his eyes the next morning, he felt cozier than he would have felt if he were sleeping in his own bed, which was strange. He was just about to use Gyo to find the source of the problem when he realized that every part of his body from the hips down had gone tingly from lack of circulation.

Gon had leaned so far onto him in his sleep that his head was in his lap. Killua could feel his aura enveloping both of them, a barrier against the early fall chill.

“Get off me, you idiot! I can't move!”

Dark hair shot up, revealing the distinct imprint of Killua’s button fly on Gon’s cheek. His ear had an angry red line where it had been folded over on itself, and his forehead was covered in deep pink creases from sleeping in such an uncomfortable position. A position he had unquestionably chosen on purpose.

“Hey, Killua,” he said in a sleepy but cheerful voice. “Did you stay warm?”

Killua pushed him out of the tree.

 

When he finally regained enough feeling in his legs to climb down, Gon was down by the river, shaving. At least Killua assumed he was. Gon kept his presence hidden pretty much constantly these days, leaving Killua with no idea where the shorter man was whenever he couldn't see or hear him.

Whatever he was up to took forever, and Killua was starting to get bored. In the half hour since they'd woken up, he had already eaten, dressed, and packed their stuff, but Gon still wasn't back. So he had to be either unconscious, or shaving.

It was unquestionably the latter.

Shaving every morning was something Killua didn't know if he'd ever have to do. Between having such faint facial hair and what he did have just not growing very fast, there was no reason for it. Even if he'd felt like his scruff was obvious, he probably wouldn't have shaved out of sheer laziness. Stubble didn't look bad, especially when you could barely see it.

Gon, on the other hand, always had the shadowy beginnings of a beard when he woke up. He wouldn't eat breakfast, or even drink his morning cup of coffee before he had meticulously shaved it off. It took him so long that he typically did it anywhere but the bathroom, since it held up everyone else's morning routine. Even on Whale Island, where there had been two bathrooms, he'd shaved outside, using a hand mirror, a cup of water, a boar bristled brush, and a bar of soap.

No razor, because of course Gon shaved with Nen.

Killua did too, actually, but not the same way. He'd figured out a year or so ago that he could transmute his aura into a slick substance that served as superior lubricant for the razor. He'd never thought about making a blade. But it was obvious that Gon had been practicing the scissors aspect of his jajanken technique until it had become second nature. He was constantly using a toned-down version that didn't require any charging to complete the most mundane  tasks.

Killua hadn't seen Gon actually use the fighting version of jajanken yet. It was theoretically possible that he had trained to the point that charging up wasn't ever necessary.

But a very unwanted memory assured Killua that it most certainly was.

This Gon wasn't _that_ Gon, he reminded himself for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, pulling his sketchbook and a pen out of his backpack. That Gon had been an emotionally destroyed fourteen-year-old in a thirty-year-old's body. That Gon was still a child. He hadn't lived the experiences that led to his power, didn't have the perspective and patience to match his physique. This Gon wasn't as insanely strong or nearly as massive, but he had also spent the last five years growing up.

How he'd grown up, Killua wasn't sure yet. But even _Gon_ couldn't make his way through five years of life without accidentally gathering a _little_ bit of perspective in the process. Things had to be somewhat different. So if Killua could just stop himself from assuming that the world was going to end again, things would flow a lot more smoothly.

Of course, the same could be said about a lot of other emotions he'd been experiencing over the past three days.

Settling down with his back to the tree they'd slept in, he began to draw to clear his head.

Drawing was a hobby he’d picked up during the countless hours he’d spent attending a real school. Alluka had begged to go, and Bisky had supported the idea that they both could benefit from leading somewhat mundane lives. After the torture training that had been most of his childhood and the constant threat on his life that had followed when he ran away, school had ended up being one of the most ridiculous trials imaginable. 

It was kind of funny, since one of the only things he had ever admitted to wanting was to live a somewhat normal life.

Subjects like math and science had come so easy to him that he’d never tried to pass the tests after learning the material. His attitude infuriated his teachers, who could tell that there was no reason for him to fail. When they threatened to call his parents, he just shrugged and showed them his hunter license.

History and world cultures were full of so many lies he actually had been interested at first. People needed to know what the world was really like. But no one listened when he explained what had _really_ been going on in places like NGL and East Gorteau. The teachers just smiled and the other students would laugh. Their willful ignorance made him so angry that he just discreetly carved patterns into his desk with his fingernails and tuned everyone else out, trying not to think of all the people he'd been unable to save.

Learning to write in a way that persuaded people to do or feel anything was a complete waste of his time because he was in hiding and _who was he going to write to?_ Literature, which maybe could have been interesting if they’d read something worthwhile, was just boring since they never actually did.

He didn't really have a reason to like art either, but he just happened to be good at it. More importantly, it was something you could do alone. He found it took up the space in his brain that would otherwise be occupied with worrying, a habit that had expanded into unhealthy levels during the months he'd worked to get custody of Alluka. Drawing was something, the one thing, he did completely for himself. He never showed what he drew in his sketchbook to anyone if he could help it. Alluka seemed to understand and never asked, though every once and awhile he'd draw her something, which she immediately framed and put up in her room.

There was no better time for it than now, as memories and worries clamored over each other for his attention. He was still at it, sketching a tree in some blank space on a page already full of a variety of small, quick sketches, when he heard Gon's voice behind him and jumped to his feet.

"Killua!"

"Don't sneak up on me, asshole!" he flipped shut the sketchbook, wrapping its elastic around it with a snap.

"I didn't know you could draw! Can I see?"

Gon's face was still wet, and his deflated hair was dripping onto the towel draped around his neck. The same dark green cargo shorts he'd been wearing their entire trip were covered with enormous splotches of water as well. If Killua were a betting man, which he sometimes was, he would put money on the chance that the shirt Gon would shortly be wearing would be the same black one that he'd had on yesterday.

But for the moment, he was shirtless, and kind of glistening. And since there was no real excuse to look away without making the gesture painfully obvious, Killua was compelled to dispassionately take in chiseled muscles that hadn't been there before, and chest hair that hadn't been there before, and freckles that he just had never taken the time to notice because maybe there were fourteen-year-olds who cared about that sort of thing, but he hadn’t been one.

He forced himself to keep his eyes at shoulder level, because there was the potential for more hair further down that he couldn’t even hypothesize about without blushing. 

"Killua, what were you drawing?" Gon asked again as he dug through his bag for a shirt. "I want to see!"

"Nothing," Killua muttered, hiding his sketchbook behind him. "It wasn't anything."

"It looked like a person," Gon continued, lifting up his arms to pull his wrinkled black shirt on as expected. The gesture was a reminder to everyone on the planet (which in this case was only Killua) that perhaps it was possible for the platonic ideal of a torso to exist.

"Or some trees, maybe? It seemed really good, from what I could see, but I only got a glimpse. C'mon, let me look... I bet it's amazing!"

Gon was watching him like a hawk now. He couldn't even stow his sketchbook away without the other man seeing exactly where he put it. Of course Gon wouldn't just sneak it out of his bag when he wasn't looking, but he would know where it was, and ask about it over and over again until Killua finally gave in.

"It's private," he said quietly.

"Okay," Gon agreed without further argument. "But if you change your mind, I'd really like to see. Or maybe you could draw something not private for me sometime!"

He didn't know what to say, because Gon had never just given up like this before. He hadn't even tried to _bargain_ with him - just made a polite request and left it be.

"Killua, why are you staring at me like that?"

"Aren’t you going to whine at me or something?"

"Well, if it's private it's private," Gon shrugged, packing away his shaving equipment. "I mean, I don't really like people to look at my journal."

"Wait, you have a _journal_?"

"Yes!" Gon was defensive. "It's not anything special, but I write in it sometimes."

Killua was laughing now because the idea that the least self-reflective person he knew all of a sudden... wasn't seemed too ridiculous to concede.

"What, so you're all _introspective_ now?"

"That's what happens when you do something really, really _stupid_ that basically kills you," Gon said softly. "You have to keep thinking about it, or you might do it again."  

The morning ground to a screeching halt.

He couldn't see what kind of face Gon was making because he couldn't lift his own eyes from the ground. But after a silence that seemed to go on forever Gon began saying his name so beseechingly that Killua was on the verge of breaking into pieces.

"It's fine, we've been over it already," he took a deep breath and brushed the situation into the smoldering heap of chaos that was growing daily in his mind. "Just don't do it again or _I'll_ kill you this time."

Killua laughed as casually as he could, maybe just a bit too hard. He looked up, and Gon’s eyes were beyond contrite, on the verge of despair.

"But Killua, I..." he took a few steps closer.

"I told you, it's fine, it's all over," Killua swung his bag onto his shoulders and started to walk in the direction they needed to go. "We should probably head out, though. I want to get to Brassford before dark, and we still have pretty far to go."

"Killua!" Gon stumbled after him, trying pull on his bag and run at the same time. "Let me eat breakfast first?"

 

"So... you and Alluka lived here?" Gon asked, staring down into the valley with wide eyes. The impressive medieval gates loomed above the Brassford skyline below them. In the grand scheme of things, they weren't very large - in Yorknew they would have been essentially invisible. But emerging from hundreds of miles of forest to see a small city in the middle of nowhere put things in a much different perspective

Killua shook his head, "We lived in a little village to the north. If I tell you where it is, I won't be able to talk for... I don't actually know, maybe forever. Bisky doesn't want anyone touching her stuff. She puts conditional Nen on anyone who knows where it is. But the town's not that interesting anyway. Suzu actually left to come here as soon as she finished school because Brassford is the biggest city in the north. It's not much compared to the other Bergerosian cities though."

Gon hummed with interest, encouraging him to go on.

"Suzu invents things. She's really creative, kind of a genius like Zepile. There was this one time, when I was seventeen that she... well, I mean, you don't really know her so maybe this won't be that interesting."

"It is interesting, Killua!" Gon protested.

He felt a warmth grow behind his ears, but it was weird. Not the sort of embarrassment he usually felt when Gon pressed him for information. It was less jarring and more like, pleasant surprise mixed with a little pride. Gon still didn’t know the extent of what Killua could do. Did he even know kanmuru existed?

"She helped me work out other things I can do with my Nen, actually. I knew I could use it to weld things, make my hands magnetic, but there's a lot of other stuff. She figured out I could generate electricity without ever seeing it. Said I made the hair on her neck stand on end whenever I got embarrassed."

"Oh," Gon scratched his head, "so _that's_ what that tingling is. It feels pretty good, no wonder Killua is so fun to tease.”

Killua glared at him, but Gon just laughed. "There it is again!"

“I don’t think you’ve actually ever seen what I can do, Gon,” he tried to be menacing.

Gon took a deep breath, “I remember it, a little. Killua was glowing all blue, and moving so fast. Like a shooting star. Right before I–”

“It’s all about using my Nen to stimulate my nerves,” Killua interrupted him. He hadn't thought that Gon remembered anything from that battle at all. But there he was, spouting off very specific observations. 

“Look, watch.”

He shook his head to loosen the worries that were gathering there and the sparking blue cloud of his aura surrounded him. The painful shock of all of his nerve endings roaring to life at once crashed across his scalp, lifting his hair from his forehead in quivering spikes.

With a quick nod to Gon, he ran back into the forest.

He went for a mile, and it took about thirty seconds. It was close enough that Gon could probably sense his speed, but far enough away that he couldn’t see the heavy breaths that Killua took to calm down.

_Like a shooting star..._

Gon’s eyes were wide when he skidded back to the overlook.

“Hey, Killua... you've gotten a lot stronger," he finally said.

"I've always been strong," he scoffed away the blush. "Anyway, if you turned off your Zetsu for a minute your Ren might knock me down."

Gon hung his head and chuckled. "It's just a habit. Well, more like... what did Hanzo call it? A practice."

"Hanzo?"

"Yeah, I trained with him."

"Who _didn't_ you train with, Gon?"

"Hmmmm, well, ever? Let's see, Ging... and the new chairperson... and your sister... oh and Zepile, he still hasn't passed the Hunter Exam... hmmmmm oh! and that Ant, Colt, he seems nice but I never trained with him. He's too busy following Kite everywhere..."

"That wasn't a question you were supposed to answer, stupid."

Gon shrugged, "I guess I did train with a lot of people though, huh? But anyway, you’re _amazing._ I've never seen anything that fast!”

He shrugged, refusing meet his eyes, “Yeah, yeah... show me yours already.”

Gon cleared his throat, “Um, I think we’re too close to the town. Sometimes it's um... really loud...”

He needed to see this, to tell himself that Gon was not a black-shrouded figure on the verge of self-destruction. That he could look like he did, and call out the beginnings of jajanken without the world falling to pieces.

“ _Get on my back_ ,” Killua muttered.

“Eh?”

“I said **get on my back** ,” Killua gritted his teeth. “I can take us five miles into the forest in a few minutes.”

He didn’t get a response, at least not a verbal one. Gon just flung himself onto his back, wrapping his legs around his waist and arms around his neck. Killua instinctively grabbed onto his legs to support him. Even with his long fingers, his hands didn’t even come close to going halfway around the oblique curves of his thighs. Gon was even heavier than he’d expected, although he didn’t know why he was surprised since he seemed to be made entirely of muscles and grins.

"Are you sure you can lift me?" Gon called down, smirking so hard Killua could hear it.

"I dunno, dummy, do you weigh more than sixty five tons?" he spat. "Because that's what I max out on."

It was humiliating to feel so overwhelmed just by holding on to the back of someone’s legs. But he did, which made him run as fast as he possibly could, regretting such a stupid idea every step of the way. The force of nature on his back was giggling, saying something about how much his aura tickled, and it made everything that much worse.

After a little over two and a half minutes, he skidded to a halt in a clearing, and all but threw the still-laughing Enhancer off of his back. He could feel the damp spots on his shirt where the contact between their bodies had made one of them sweat. He didn't even know whose sweat it was, maybe both.

He forced himself to think about Milluki in the bathtub.

There was a rock in the center of the open space, and Gon had made his way directly in front of it, rolling his shoulders fluidly to warm himself up.

Killua crossed his own arms, feeling a little annoyed. If he had warmed up, he probably would have run the same mile in twenty seconds. Stupid.

“Did you forget how it works?” he called out.

Gon shook his head, as though he had just come to a decision. "I'm not gonna do rock. You already know what that looks like, and if I use full power it might... um... destroy everything."

"Stop stalling," Killua groused, refusing to admit to himself why he was standing so far away.

Gon smiled at him, and then turned back to the stone, drawing back his right forearm

“ _Saisho wa guu…_ ”

His voice was full of quiet intent, but no menace, no despair. It reverberated against the base of Killua’s spine. 

“… _janken…_ ”

The swirl of Nen was tighter and more focused than he could ever remember from Gon’s normal attack, but it didn’t look like the beginnings of a nuclear blast either.

“… ** _chi_** _!_ ”

A five-foot long blade sprouted from Gon’s fingers, shimmering with the sort of detail that was only a few years shy of complete mastery over the technique. Supporting his wrist with his other hand like a broadsword, Gon swung his arms, and brought down the blade at an angle, slicing through the rock as though it were butter.

The blade disappeared in an explosion of sparks, leaving behind a very sheepish Gon with the dusty wreckage of what had once been a nice looking boulder.

“I’m still not very good at paper,” he called out.

Killua picked his jaw off the ground. 

* * *

“So this is your friend’s house?”

It was dark when they finally stood in front of the ramshackle collection of industrial spaces that Suzu called home. A garage adjacent to a warehouse with no visible windows, all the same dreary grey. The last time Killua had visited, Suzu had been sleeping on a mattress lying on the floor in the wide space that served as her workshop. The only thing that had changed on the exterior since then was the keypad lock on the door.

"Yeah, it's kind of depressing."

"No!" Gon shook his head, "I mean, with this kind of space I bet she does some really neat stuff. You could build a whole truck in there!"

"A truck?" he lifted his hand and shorted out the lock with a quick zap. "Of all the things someone could possibly make, you think of a _truck_?"

Gon shrugged, "Well it's big... and... mechanical... Killua did you just break the lock?"

"She'll fix it," Killua pushed open the door.

He was immediately bathed in a golden, homey light. A hallway was there that hadn't been there before, with doors on either side that were also new. He walked forward cautiously, turning a corner and stepping into an enormous open space.

The mattress on the floor had been moved, apparently.

In its place was a single-room apartment with an industrial style kitchen. The entire far wall had been taken out and replaced with nothing but glass that had to be mirrored on the outside. Uniquely architectural lighting fixtures hung from the ceiling. Over the kitchen was a skylight as big as Gon's entire bedroom on Whale Island. In the far corner, behind some screens was a bed the size of a swimming pool.

"Suzu?" he called to the empty room, wondering what on earth had happened to the place.

"Killua.... did you accidentally break into a stranger's house?" Gon asked nervously.

The muted shriek of an air drill answered his question.

 

"Do you want to hold my hand?" Gon asked helpfully.

The door to the workshop hadn't been hard to find. It was steel and the only door in the entire apartment that could be opening up to a space larger than a bathroom.

"No, you idiot. Would we really hold hands _constantly?_ It'd get in the way."

"Well, I don't know, I might want to..." Gon started to argue.

Killua turned to face him. "Okay, you just... do whatever you want once we get in there. You will anyway. It's not like she'll be surprised when she sees me embarrassed, she sure liked to do it herself."

Gon's questioning look made him realize he'd said too much, or maybe too little before. Either way, there was no time to explain. 

"Right now," he continued insistently, hoping Gon would just drop whatever line of interrogation he was about to start, "I'm tired, and we have been walking for a long time. Holding your hand while we walk through a door would just be awkward so I _don't think we need to_."

"Okay, I guess," Gon acquiesced.

"So remember," for what had to be the thirtieth time, he went over the story they had concocted, "you ran into us on Scabtree Island-"

"You and I took a long walk on the beach and then I kissed you, kind of on accident but mostly on purpose," Gon finished, including the specifics he'd insisted on with great relish.

"There doesn't have to be so many details! It's just easier to mix it up that way."

"But Killua, I _would_ remember, and I'd want to tell everyone," Gon protested.

He sighed in resignation. There was no way they could go over this anymore. It was going to work, or it wasn't. That was that.

Killua turned the cold metal knob and pushed the door in cautiously.

The room was full of machinery, some pieces he recognized, others were completely foreign - rough-looking enough to assume they completed tasks there hadn't already been a tool for, so Suzu had designed them herself. The woman in question was seated cross-legged on the surface of a workbench at the far end of the room. Her dark skin looked almost blue under the fluorescent lights. He could have sworn she was still wearing the same loose, brown, calf-length pants and orange flowing shirt he had seen her in the last time he visited. She was staring down her glasses at a complicated bit of electronics, and lifted her eyes over the frames when he came in.

"Hey," he said as though they saw each other every day.

"Wow," Suzu blinked, setting down whatever it was she was holding. She hopped up from the bench and strode across the workshop in large bounding steps. Her thick bone earrings swung as she moved.

He expected her to hug him, but she just stood in front of Gon, openly staring.

"I mean, _wow_ Killua. No wonder you've been talking about this guy for years, just look at him."

Killua gritted his teeth, trying to stay upright as the blood rushed to his cheeks, "Nice to see you too."

"Years?" Gon asked with interest.

"Oh Killua, don't be embarrassed!" she reached out to grasp Gon's hand and shook it fiercely.

"I'm Suzu Strauss, nice to meet you. You are _the_  Gon, right? Not just a random professional athlete he picked up off the street?"

Gon nodded, but couldn't get a word in before she began again.

"He might blush, but you are _really hot,_ there's just no denying it."

When she let go of his hand, Gon squeezed his fingers a few times, as though he were trying to restore blood flow to the beleaguered extremities.

"Thanks, but Killua is the pretty one," with a final shake, he reached out and grabbed Killua's hand.

Killua had to respond in the most convincing way he possibly could, so he sputtered with all the mortification he was currently experiencing.

"Yep, he definitely is pretty," Suzu untied the handkerchief that had been wrapped around her head, letting her long dreadlocks fall down her back. "Especially when he's embarrassed, right?"

Gon laughed and nodded. In retribution, Killua squeezed his hand hard enough to shatter bones, but Gon didn't seem to care when he was the one doing it.

"Is this really where you work?" he looked around the room with amazement. The walls were covered in tools, wires, and strange pieces of metal that could have been junk or priceless for all either of them knew. "It's amazing!"

"Yeah," Suzu wiped a line of grease off of her forearm with the kerchief, "this isn't just where I work - I gutted the place and built pretty much everything in it. Obviously you saw the apartment already."

"It's not so much of a dump anymore," Killua offered, thankful to have the attention directed somewhere else.

"Well, if you came to visit once and awhile during one of your 'vacations'," she made quotes in the air with her fingers, "you'd have seen it already. Wait till you see Ila's restaurant, though. It's going to blow your mind, I'm so proud of it. He'll be home soon, I think. I made him promise to close up early, but you never know what kind of customers might show up. I like your new haircut, by the way. I had no idea what the back of your neck looked like."

Suzu had always been driven, knowing exactly what she wanted and unlike a lot of people she willing to make the effort to get there, but it was still a bit odd, seeing her like this: standing in a workshop and house she'd renovated, with a thriving business, and a fiancé to boot. She was only a year older than Killua was, but he couldn't imagine being in a place where he felt like settling down this much. Getting married at twenty seemed maybe just a little rushed.

"Someone just came in the house," Gon offered. "Whoever it is smells really, really good."

The light in Suzu's eyes could have illuminated the entire room.

"Ila!" she shouted in a voice he had never heard her use before. Happy and content and excited all at once.

Maybe "rushed" was a premature assumption.

 

"So then," Suzu fell back into the couch, flinging her feet across her fiancé's slender legs, "I tell him, 'That's my boyfriend's little sister,' and anything he can say to her he can say to me. Of course, I didn't realize the reason he was yelling was the guy was so shy the only way he could work himself up to asking her out was by bellowing. Oh, Alluka was so mad, she wouldn't look at me for days!"

Killua and Gon had been relegated to either sit in two separate chairs, or share one large overstuffed one. Gon had pulled him down into the large chair immediately, and Killua was nearly sitting on his lap. The proximity meant that he could feel Gon momentarily stiffen at the word "boyfriend."

He really should have gone over some more things before they'd arrived.

"That guy was a moron anyway," Killua huffed with disdain. "He used to try to buy cigarettes off me."

"You smoked?" Gon lifted his eyebrow.

"One time! I had one cigarette that I fucking _found_ and a teacher caught me with it. All of a sudden everyone in school thought I was their direct line to nicotine. Those things don't work on me, and they're disgusting. Once was enough."

Ila yawned for the third time, eyes glassy.

"Well, so, you two," Suzu stood up, "I hate to tell you this, but it turns out we don't have anywhere to keep you. There's a spare bed in the couch, but Ila's brother already claimed it. It's not very comfortable anyway," her eyes twinkled, "or private. I already made a reservation for you at the hotel downtown. It's a suite I designed, so it's almost like you're staying here, except maybe better. And Ila's not going to tell you this," the man grumbled sheepishly, "but he's exhausted, so we should probably turn in."

"Let us help you clean up first," Gon jumped up, knocking Killua in the back with his knees.

"No, no," Suzu was already halfway to the kitchen. "I like washing dishes alone, it helps me decompress. Just go get your stuff and I'll bring you the directions."

Killua stood, shook Ila's hand, and then followed Gon into the hallway. But instead of grabbing his things, Gon was just standing there.

“Suzu was your girlfriend?” he looked dazed. There was something else in his eyes that Killua couldn’t quite pin down, and it unnerved him.

When he didn't respond immediately Gon's eyes narrowed.

“Killua, are you trying to make Suzu jealous? Are you using me to-?”

“No!” he hissed, angry at himself for not anticipating this would happen, and annoyed at Gon for developing such an unpredictable moral compass. “I forget we dated half the time! It is that unimportant at this point.”

“But Killua told me all about her, what she did, and what she liked… so many things! Did you really just forget that you two had se–”

" _How do you know that_?" Killua sputtered, not letting him finish.

Gon scratched his head, "I don't know, I can just... smell it, kind of? When you saw each other, like a memory. I can tell with lots of people. Like Leorio and..."

“It never seemed relevant!” Killua hissed, having zero desire to know who Gon smelled on Leorio. “I was seventeen, it happened once, and…”

_We both cried afterwards because it made us realize out that neither of us wanted it..._

“…it’s in the past, Gon. Suzu is my friend. And I know you hate to see people get hurt, but believe me, I brought you to make her happy, not to make her jeal–”

“Killua?” Suzu called from the kitchen, her voice growing in volume as she approached. “Are you guys still hungry? Do you want to take anything to the hotel?” And then two sets of feet were coming down the hall. In a panic, Killua opened the nearest door and pulled Gon in after him, slamming it closed.

He immediately regretted the decision.

It was too late, they’d been seen. He could hear Suzu chuckle when she stopped at the entrance to the hallway. There was the sound of whispering but he couldn’t make it out.

“She heard us, and she thinks you have to apologize to me with kisses for not telling me you she was your girlfriend,” Gon whispered helpfully in the low light.

Killua smacked him in the shoulder to shut him up.

They waited in silence for the sound of retreating footsteps.

And waited.

And waited.

“They’re _listening_ , the pervs!” he managed to shriek and whisper all at the same time.

“We should probably give them something to listen to then, right?” Killua could feel their bodies brushing against each other as Gon moved closer.

“Gon, I am not going to make out with you in here!”

“Why? I brushed my teeth after dinner," he made a very exaggerated brushing gesture with his hand.

Killua was not going to argue with him about this. He was going to deal with it, and then they would stumble out of the door full of shame, because this situation was, if nothing else, _completely_ humiliating.

Rolling up his sleeve, he put his lips to the inside of his elbow, and began to suck, making the loudest smacking sound he possibly could while still sounding believable.

Gon looked utterly flabbergasted at first, but after a few moments his bewilderment grew into interest. At a certain point, he was watching Killua suck on his own skin in the dim light like he was desperate to learn just _how_ a man made out with whatever the hell the inside of your elbow was called.

It could not possibly get worse than this, the magnificent glowing zenith of what awkward could be.

And then Gon started to make noises.

Just little pants at first, and then tiny moans, and then _louder_ moans mixed in with whimpers and gasps that were _very_ convincing. Once he seemed to have a handle on making sounds, he started arrhythmically backing up into the door in a pretty good approximation of being slammed against it.

Killua would have been forced to appreciate how accurately Gon seemed to grasp the abstract mechanics of kissing if he weren’t on the verge of splitting in half; torn between mortification and the most unexpected and unwanted arousal he could possibly imagine.

Because Gon was _impressively_ skilled at sounding like someone in general and in this situation, Killua specifically, was kissing him into oblivion.

Five years without any contact was a long time. The distance had built new walls on top of old wounds. They were still best friends, maybe, but did they really know each other anymore? In an ideal situation, they'd spend some time alone, maybe go on a few small adventures. Take it slow. Rediscover what drew them to each other in the first place.

But Killua had officially decided that the situation was not ideal. In fact, it was so much the opposite that he was going to have an enormous hickey on the inside of his elbow.

Because instead of taking things slow, they were pretending to make out in a closet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't wait, so I published this a day early, for better or worse. How many times can you say fuck before a T rating is too low? Oh well, it's going to go up later I am pretty sure. 
> 
> There is no way you could use Nen to make a plasma torch but just LET ME HAVE THIS.
> 
> I know OCs are typically irritating, but I can't really see Killua developing as a healthy human being without making some new friends outside of Gon's influence. So they're here.


	5. The color of my blood

He woke up to the sun in his eyes, even though all the curtains were closed.

Next to him Gon was snoring violently. Well, approximately next to him. The bed in the hotel had been designed so that five people could sleep in it comfortably. He could fit an entire pillow lengthwise between their bodies.

Which he had done, insisting that Gon kicked in his sleep.

He didn't. Not unless it was a trait he'd developed in the past five years. Killua was always the one who had tossed and turned, though Alluka's relentless pinches throughout their travels had forced him to restrain himself a bit. Gon had never seemed to care, waking up with Killua on him or under him, or legs tangled all up when they had seen it necessary to sleep in close quarters before.

But after Gon's pornography-worthy performance, Killua wanted to keep as much space between them as possible without drawing too much attention to the fact that he was distancing himself. He couldn't very well sleep in the bathtub, or on the suite's tiny couch, so the pillow was there.

It was unclear to him for whose sake that was, really.

He squinted upwards at the ceiling, trying to figure out where the hell all the light was coming from. It had to be a skylight or something that he just hadn't seen when they had stumbled into bed in the near-darkness. But why put a light you couldn't turn off directly over a bed? Maybe Suzu was somehow not as clever as he had always thought.

She did seem convinced that he and Gon were together, which he had not been certain would happen.

Of course, the closet incident ended up working to their advantage. The door hadn't been designed to withstand Freecss-level forces, and the two of them had tumbled out in a heap of twisted limbs. He didn't know what expression Gon had been making because he couldn't bring himself to look in his direction, but Suzu had waved a small map in front of his own mortified face, saying they could get to their hotel in five minutes if they ran. 

On the bed next to him, Gon was uncharacteristically restless. He mumble-shouted and then flipped over, hitting the mattress so hard Killua was momentarily airborne.

The idiot wanted attention even in his sleep.

He did have to admit that it was Gon who was really selling the whole thing. He was so earnest in his affection that Killua couldn't help but react. Since his reactions were more or less authentic, they convinced everyone. No one else thought the smiling, cheery Gon capable of any kind of deceit. And he wasn't particularly good at it normally, but Killua knew that behind earnest eyes and endless optimism was a confusing person with a chaotic moral compass. Other people had no idea what extremes Gon would go to when there was a game he wanted to win. And for whatever reason, this was one.

And that was fine. Gon's competitive nature was predictable. It made sense, even when it didn't seem very logical.

He was lying on his stomach now, half of his face smushed against the pillow. A small galaxy of freckles sprayed across the intersection between his sideburn stubble and the faint, crinkling lines at the corner of his eyes. Lines that were the only evidence of a thousand laughing smiles that Killua hadn't gotten to see.

Probably more like a million.

Killua flopped on his back, and closed his eyes tight, willing himself to remember the first time Alluka had seen a shooting star, the first hug that Nanika had given someone who wasn't him. He recalled in great detail the light reflecting off of Alluka's hair the first time she had danced on her toes, the hopeful look on Nanika's face as she learned the alphabet. Moments in his sister's life that he would not just have missed; they never would have happened at all.

This had been the only way. The only way to keep her safe. The only way to give her a life worth being safe in.

And when it came down to it, Gon had let him go, anyway, without so much as an argument, or even a plan to meet up later.

He'd let everything go, really. The fact that he was here now didn't change that.

The clock on the nightstand said it was six thirty in the morning.

Without disturbing the mattress in the slightest, Killua got out of bed and noiselessly dressed. He could either stare at Gon for the next hour, or go for a run to clear his head.

Making the latter decision took a level of self-control beyond what he was comfortable admitting to himself.

  

"Killua, you're back!"

"Yeah, and I brought us breakfast, you lazy..."

Gon was in a fluffy white robe, a half moon of stubble bisecting his face. A thin string of soap lined the right side of his jaw. Behind him was the suite's dining table, done up to the point of overkill with folded napkins, a vase of flowers, and a fancy carafe of water. Acting as a centerpiece was an enormous stack of what looked to be blueberry... or no.... it was definitely chocolate-chip pancakes, covered with a mountain of whipped cream.

Killua had two greasy breakfast sandwiches. Two coffees.

He held them out lamely.

"I um... got room service to surprise you, Killua..." Gon didn't seem to know what to do with his excitement now that it was obvious that they'd both had the same idea, albeit with wildly different executions.

"You look like an idiot."

"They showed up before I was ready! Did you know hotels came with robes? This is the fanciest place I've ever stayed." 

"Well, guess we don't need these anymore," Killua tossed the bag of sandwiches towards the trash.

The blur of white robe and tanned skin and greeny-black hair that intercepted the throw was equal parts impressive and absurd.

"Killua wait! I saw that they had these chocolate pancakes and I didn't think to get anything else," Gon smile was sheepish as he clutched the paper sack to his chest. "I think if I just eat them, I'll be sick."

And Killua couldn't help it. He laughed. Maybe it was all the endorphins from his run, but this whole scenario was just beyond ridiculous. An awkward night in the fanciest suite in the hotel, the honeymoon suite, judging by the size of the bathtub, with the two of them tiptoeing around each other so much that they had both brought breakfast by accident.

"We should probably talk about what we're doing in the morning next time," Gon took the coffees from his hands before he spilled them all over the place. "But it was a good surprise."

Killua didn't respond because he was too busy being strangled by his own hysteria. He stumbled across the suite, stripping off his sweaty shirt and flopping into a seat at the table, still cracking up.

"Well, you got all this stuff, aren't you gonna sit?" he finally coughed out to Gon, who was just standing there.

"Oh um, yeah!" he said, way too loud for the room. His face was a funny color.

"You alright?" Killua shoveled the most delicious pancakes he'd had in years into his mouth. A bit of the cream fell off of his fork and dripped onto his chest, trickling down to leave a foamy white trail across his abdomen. He wiped it off with the fancy napkin, but it still left a smear.

"This is pretty delicious," he added, not waiting for a response.

"That's really great Killua!" Gon said strangely, shoving an entire breakfast sandwich in his mouth and looking really unhappy about it.

"Why are you eating like that, you moron!?" Killua stopped what he was doing to make sure he didn't choke. Gon just awkwardly smiled around the enormous amount of food in his mouth and gave him a thumbs-up.

"Are you pissed or something? Your face is really red."

"UST E UM HU THOWA," was all he got.

Killua shrugged and dragged another pancake onto his plate with his fork, somehow flicking whipped cream on his face in the process. "The water is always too hot in these places," he said before catching up the sweetness on his finger and licking it off.

Gon's face was screwed up from chewing, and nodded many more times than was necessary for the question. Killua had no idea what was going on with him, but for a brief moment, he did not care. He ate a third pancake. Then a fourth. Then a fifth and on and on until all that was left was a tepid chocolate smeared mess that had once been spherical and cake-like at the bottom.

"You gonna eat that?" Killua asked while pulling it onto his plate.

Gon shook his head, holding the second breakfast sandwich. This one he had taken a dozen slow bites out of, chewing each one deliberately like it was made out of rubber.

"You should have that second coffee," Killua stood up. "You need to wake up or something. I'm gonna take a shower."

 

He left the bathroom twenty minutes later to discover Gon in some kind of a serious situation. Killua's immediate observation wasn't sexual in the slightest. Just a very obvious statement of fact.

It looked pretty painful, actually

"Wow. I can see the outline of your-"

"They don't fit at all!" Gon interrupted, whining like Killua had purposely made his clothing too small.

"When is the last time you wore those?" Killua rubbed the towel over his hair thoughtfully. "Had your voice even changed yet?"

"Last year!" Gon wailed.

"Are you sure? Because those are eight inches too short, and like I said, I can see the _distinct_ outline of your-"

Gon turned and made such an angry, mortified face, that Killua felt vindicated for years of compliments that he hadn't know how to accept without the deepest embarrassment. He tried not to, he really did, but a deep crackling laugh bubbled up in his chest, and a bit of it escaped before he caught it.

"I d-didn't really grow much until last year," Gon ground out. "Then, I grew a lot. I didn't think about it when I packed fancy clothes."

Ignoring Gon's clear lack of understanding of the concept of "fancy," Killua couldn't help but be impressed at how he'd managed to fit jeans designed for someone who was about five four and a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet over the... robust contour of his ass.

"How are they not ripping?"

"Nen," Gon's teeth were clenched as he fumbled with the button to take them off. He couldn't get his blunt fingers between the waistband and his own skin, but it was extremely entertaining to watch him try.

"Oh, yeah... like that rock thing we used to do with Bisky. Good idea. I wonder how long they can stay like that till they split. I mean, your calves look like they're being strangled."

Gon relaxed, and the jeans did just that, ripping apart at the seams like a popping sack of flour.

"Alright big guy, looks like we've gotta get you some clothes."

  

"Do I really need all this?" Gon furrowed his brows unhappily at the steadily growing number of outfits assembled outside the dressing room. "None of this is even fancy enough for a wedding."

Suzu shrugged, "I dunno. I wear the same thing every day. I don't know why I'm even here."

"I heard you two!" Killua muttered from just outside the alcove, holding up an outfit and taking a photo to send to Alluka for her opinion.

"I asked him to invite you," Gon whispered, though not quietly enough to keep him from overhearing. "Have you seen some of the things he wears?"

"You should have seen him in high school," she whispered back. "An _entire year_ of pastel floral pants."

"I looked really good," Killua casually let them know their conversation wasn't private. "I'd still wear that stuff if I wasn't too tall."

"You'd look good in a trash bag," Suzu ignored the available chairs and flopped onto the floor, tinkering with a tiny... something she'd had in her pocket - he couldn't quite see out of the corner of his eye, "that doesn't mean I recommend wearing one."

"But I only need something for the wedding," Gon tried again. "I can't fit this all in my bag."

"We'll ship it," Killua called into the room as he took another photo. He wished Alluka was here to offset the excessive complaining from the two people he knew who cared the absolute least about clothing. Maybe _she'd_ be able to justify to Gon why it was important to have more than one outfit.

"But where would it go? Mito-san isn't even home and I'm hardly ever on Whale Island anyway."

"Then we'll store it at my place. You need to wear something other than those shorts to the stuff we'll be going to."

"I don't care if he wears those shorts, and it's my stuff," Suzu didn't look up from the tangled mass of wires.

"They're starting to smell," Killua said lazily, feeling irritated with her, but as usual, not enough to really do much about it.

"I have a washing machine," there was a bright spark from the device that didn't faze her in the slightest. "No one will complain if he hangs out without pants for awhile."

"Hey, Suzu… are you guys having a fight?" Gon muttered.

He could see his perplexed face without even having to look at him.

"I dunno, Killua, are we?" she called out.

Killua ignored her, lowering his phone just after, " _Maybe with that teal vest_?" popped up on the screen.

"Gon," he swallowed trying to imagine what it would sound like if he expressed his actual feelings on the matter and finding the whole thing kind of difficult to conceptualize, "it would make me uh..."

Gon glanced at him expectantly. But he couldn't bring himself to say anything more, so he took up the time by walking into alcove, bringing three more outfits with him.

Gon smiled when he came in, still waiting.

"I think they would look..."he tried again. He wasn't even sure why he was doing this. Gon dressed up would actually be uncharacteristic and kind of weird. But fun.

But weird.

"Have you ever worn anything that Mito-san didn't buy for you?" he tried, realizing almost immediately that it was the wrong approach.

"I buy all my own clothes now," Gon was getting irritated. "Killua, I'm not just some dumb kid still."

"I just want to see what you'd look like, you moron!" he snapped back.

"I know I'm not much to look at, but is it really that bad that I need all these clothes?" Gon yelled even louder.

"You're fucking hot, you dumbass, but that's not the point... of..."

Well shit.

"...clothes."

"You think I'm hot?"

Instead of just taking the compliment, Gon was playing up his shock. Or maybe it was authentic. Either way it didn't much matter.

Suzu made a choking noise that was probably supposed to be some kind of laugh.

It was at this point that Killua had to acknowledge that two simultaneous deceptions were going on.

The more obvious was the fake relationship he and Gon had been fronting for this entire trip. That was a lie, for sure, and it required pretty constant maintenance. But it was the second one that seemed to be taking up even more of his energy. And that was to make certain that Gon thought that Killua's feelings for him were one hundred percent platonic.

Because it was rapidly becoming apparent that they _weren't_.

But he could ignore exactly what that meant for the time being because right now the likelihood of lying to both Suzu and Gon at the same time was spectacularly low.

Gon had asked him a very pointed question about his attraction level. If he brushed it off, Suzu would notice. He _had_ dated her and she thought that, when push came to shove, he would at least begrudgingly admit how he felt. But Gon _also_ knew how he reacted. If he blushed and sputtered, he would pick up on it. He'd figure it out immediately that Killua had admitted he was good looking by accident, and at some point in time he would most definitely bring it up. He had to make it seem like he had done the whole thing on purpose.

If he could pull it off, things might just manage to stagger along in the same dysfunctional but bearable way they had been.

He dropped the clothes he was holding into the pile that had accumulated outside the dressing room, and took a few steps over to Gon. The idiot was still wide-eyed, as though no one in the world had ever called him attractive before. He didn't know what he was playing at but acting like his "boyfriend" never paid him a single goddamn compliment wasn't helping their case in the slightest. In all of their interactions thus far, Gon had always, _always_ taken the romantically aggressive part, so maybe this was some kind of payback for making him carry everything in this stupid game.

Fine. He wasn't the only one playing.

Grabbing the front of Gon's shirt, he yanked until wide brown eyes were even with his own.

Gon blinked.

Killua crushed their lips together.

It was a _terrible_ kiss, by all accounts. More defiant and angry than anything. Their noses were smashing together, and he had kind of missed, lips higher than where they actually should have been, way too close to nostrils for comfort. He pulled away, but didn't let go.

"I don't know, Gon. You tell me."

Gon fell back on his heels when Killua let go. He looked deeply stunned.

Served him right.

Killua slid his phone out of his pocket and casually looked at the screen, as though nothing very serious had just happened, and he'd just got a text.

He hadn't.

"You should try some of that stuff on," he said over his shoulder. "Alluka asked me to call her, be back in a minute."

If this was a game, he was going to win.

 

He didn't call his sister. Obviously.

The shop was not very busy, so he found a deserted corner and slumped down against the wall. If he kept his head down he was entirely hidden behind a display of scarves. That was good because his face was so hot he was pretty certain he was on the verge of setting off the emergency sprinklers. If someone saw him they might call an ambulance.

He'd kissed Gon.

Holy shit he'd kissed Gon.

He tried to remember what Gon's lips had felt like, but the overwhelming stress of the situation had shut down all of his higher brain function the moment he'd started pulling on that shirt. All he knew was that it had been a sloppy, terrible kiss and now Gon was going to think he didn't even know how to do it. He'd never want to do it again.

Again? This was never going to happen again because it wasn't real, and there was absolutely no reason for it to happen again unless they were trying to trick someone else.

So it might.

The thought was thrilling and terrifying all at once.

Things were rapidly getting out of hand.

 

When he came back, Gon was apologizing profusely to the shop owner and Suzu was rolling on the floor with laughter. The pile of clothes he had selected had been taken away completely, and a stack of dressy jackets were in their place.

The sleeves had been torn from the body on at least half of them.

"No apologies necessary, sir," the owner had said, clasping the enormous wad of money that Gon had most likely shoved at him. "In fact, I should be apologizing for not stocking the proper sizes for such a remarkable physique."

"They were too big, Killua," Gon turned to him, looking sheepish. "The ones that fit my shoulders didn't fit here," he gestured towards his abdomen. "So we tried the smaller ones and..."

"They all ripped!" Suzu gasped. "Just… immediately. I’ve never seen anything like it!"

"This is a problem with men of your body type, sir," the owner spoke up. "I imagine you've had some difficulty finding trousers that fit over your calves as well?"

"I just wear shorts, mostly," Gon shrugged.

"Might I ask what sort of event you need clothing for?"

"A wedding."

"Black tie?"

Gon looked uncertain, "I don't know what that means."

"It's not black tie," Killua sighed. "But not casual either."

"I think I may have a solution!" the man clapped his hands together. "If you don't mind waiting, say, a half hour? I can bring in the house tailor, and I am certain that after a proper fitting we can work to alter our stock into something appropriate. You see, the issue with jackets will be doubly apparent in terms of shirts..."

"You better not make him look like an idiot," Killua glared.

"I assure you, your husband will look delightful," the man oozed.

Killua considered not punching him one of the great achievements of his life.

He spent the next hour arguing with the tailor and the store owner over the best colors to put Gon in and the best cuts for his body type. The battle over pleats was particularly brutal, but he won. At some point, Suzu's tiny mechanical device was completed, and she sat it on the floor, where it mimicked Killua's movements until he stepped on it. She didn't mind in the slightest, just picked it up and started working on it all over again. 

Finally, the flustered tailor seemed confident in his measurements. He left them to pay for the two pairs of jeans that Gon had found that fit and the jacket Killua had insisted he keep.

"So what's next for you two?" Suzu asked. "I should probably be getting home - my family's driving in pretty soon." 

"Uh," Gon scratched the back of his head, "I should probably train for a bit. I haven't really done it for days, and..."

"Do you need the battery?" Suzu asked him.

"Battery?" 

"Yeah, to charge up your Nen," she said, as though it were obvious.

Killua snorted.

She turned to him and scowled. "Sorry, I'm not part of the Hunter club, but I thought all you Nen users had to do that, okay?"

"Just me," Killua shrugged, "and I'm good for today, I charged up this morning."

"Killua!" Gon was thrilled, "Does that mean you're going to come?"

"Of course I am," he looked at the ground to hide the red staining his cheeks. "You'll tear down the forest by yourself."

 

"So how do you wanna do it?"

"All the way," Gon rolled his shoulders, "I want to see if I can take it."

He cracked his neck and his Ren exploded to life. It was almost sloppy. They were about ten miles away from town, standing in front of each other in a section of the forest that wasn't completely overrun with underbrush. The air was just a bit too tense for this to be seen as something normal. But it wasn't like they hadn't sparred before, hundreds of times in the past, and even just a few days ago. But Gon had been drunk then, and neither had really gone all-out.

But apparently they were going to now.

"Are you excited, Killua?" Gon asked just a little bit too quietly.

"W-what?" Killua started. "Why?"

Gon looked like he was ready to devour him.

"Because I feel like I'm gonna get struck by lightning and I thought maybe you were doing it," he said, smiling a little.

 _He just likes to fight, he just likes to fight, he just likes to fight,_ Killua reminded himself. His own blood was thrumming in his veins. 

"It has been awhile since I've actually gotten to fight anybody for real," he admitted out loud. It was an understatement. The last person he'd physically fought other than Bisky had been an enormous red ant person who exploded when he got angry.

Gon cleared his throat and the intensity, whatever it had been, passed. His Ren calmed down into something manageable. Had it been bloodlust? It hadn't seemed like it, but was Killua just that out of practice that he couldn't recognize it anymore?

"Don't use your kanmuru yet, okay Killua?" Gon insisted, "And I won't use jajanken."

"Idiot, you just said you wanted to see if you could take it."

"I do, but," Gon pulled off the dark green hunting jacket Killua had insisted he buy, "I'm pretty sure one of us is gonna end up unconscious, and I'd like us to have some fun first."

His realism was disturbing and refreshing all at once.

"Fine. But I can't promise I won't draw dicks on your face when that happens," Killua scoffed, pulling off his turtleneck. He turned, and it was only a lifetime of brutal training that kept him from running right into the fist flying towards his face.

Since when had Gon started playing dirty?

It felt like he was going to touch the back of his knees with his head when he bent backwards to dodge the punch. Gon's other fist swung just as fast, aiming for his stomach. Killua flung his head forward to pull in his core and hooked one of his feet behind Gon's ankle. He yanked, a motion that wasn't nearly as productive as he hoped, and it only resulted in pulling them close together. A fist grazed his abdomen, spinning his body sideways, and Gon's own punch was really what knocked them apart.

This fight was nothing like the sparring on Whale Island.

He could feel Gon's aura reinforcing his hand; the four knuckles that had grazed his stomach had undoubtedly left four bruised lines behind. Gon was an Enhancer, strengthening his own body came naturally. Now that they were about equal in physical strength, that probably meant that, without kanmuru, Gon could _destroy_ him in hand to hand combat.

Well, if he could catch him first.

He spun around to kick Gon in the face.

Even sober, Gon was still slower than he was. Killua threw a barrage of punches, kicks, and jabs, before Gon had the chance to retaliate. He'd hit him at least a dozen times, and he hadn't used his Nen to increase his speed at all. Gon was laughing, an authentic happy sound, and it made Killua's heart swell up even when Gon blocked one of his kicks with an arm so enhanced with Nen that it rattled him all the way up to his teeth.

"I missed Killua a lot," Gon jumped up and kicked him in the side. Even with Nen, it sent him flying, and it took a huge amount of willpower to keep himself from electrifying his synapses.

"Why?" he thrust out his leg and skidded to a stop on the edge of his sneaker, "Because no one else can take what you dish out?"

Gon chuckled, chasing after him, "Not just that, but yeah I guess I do feel a lot less..."

Killua tripped him, and lifted his leg to slam his heel into his momentarily prone body, "Less what?"

Gon rolled out of the way at the last moment, "Being stronger than everyone else is lonelier than I ever thought it would be." He jumped up and jabbed his elbow at Killua's face. It connected with his jaw. "I missed knowing that..."

Killua's head snapped back, but he used the opportunity to stomp Gon in the kneecap, sending him to the ground.

"OUCH," Gon bellowed, falling down on his other knee. What he missed knowing was left unsaid, but Killua was feeling too good to pursue it at the moment.

"Go ahead, use jajanken, it's not like you can even hit me," he taunted. Jajanken needed contact, and since Gon couldn't ever catch him, it was useless.

" _Saisho wa gu_..." Gon staggered to his feet and began. Killua flipped out of the range of scissors and stretched his arms behind his head.

"What are you doing, Gon?" he called out.

"... _janken_..." Gon's mouth curled into a grin.

"Stop messing around," Killua shook out his arms. "I'm not going to fall for your tricks and come any closer."

" _PA_!"

Six balls of aura shot out of Gon's palm, heading directly for him.

Kanmuru was instant. At this point, it was hard not to use it when he felt threatened. With the added speed, Killua dodged, and the Nen missiles blew harmlessly by.

"My turn," he smirked, and the blue field of electricity around him sparked and hissed with excitement.

Gon lifted his eyebrows, and then Killua was running without ever commanding himself to do so.

The missiles hadn't gone away.

They were following him.

Kanmuru was doing just what it was intended to do, getting him the hell out, but they were right on his tail.

"It's a good idea, right?" Gon called out as Killua dodged and weaved his way around the surrounding trees and underbrush. "I can't ever seem to make Paper strong enough to finish an opponent, but when you showed me what you could do, I thought maybe this would be the only way I could ever catch you."

Somehow being chased was exhilarating.

Killua was pushing himself to the limit. Even with his Nen enhanced nervous system. Gon's Paper missiles were fast and relentless. He reached a point where brambles and trees blocked his way, forcing him to backflip over the orbs at the last second. The instant his feet hit the ground he tore off, running in the opposite direction. He jumped, and swung from the boughs of trees, using their stability to instantly change his trajectory, but ripping them down in the process. He shot a lightning bolt at one of the orbs, but all it seemed to do was absorb his aura and grow bigger.

Gon could do that?

He had missed this. He’d missed it so much that it hurt now, his heart swelling in his chest.

The smell of ozone was thick in his nostrils and his blood was pumping heavy in his veins. Every molecule of his being was alive and roaring as he ran and dodged and danced out of the way, drawing ever smaller circles around Gon. A single lightning bolt would paralyze him, probably, but would Paper still be in effect, chasing him until Gon regained his ability to move? He had no idea.

It was not surprising, the way their abilities had developed to compliment each other so much. But now it seemed like neither of them could win in a one-on-one contest. Perfectly poised for mutual destruction.

The spiral grew tighter, until he was close enough to reach out and grab Gon. He clasped him in his arms, and pulled them together, holding on to him with an iron grip. If this were a real battle, he’d be at great risk, but Gon would also have to stop Paper now, or they'd both be hit. He'd never been hit with his own Nen, but he couldn't imagine it was a pleasant experience.

"Uh… Killua, I don't know how to-" was the last thing he heard, and then everything went white and dazzling. 

 

They came to in a tangled mess of limbs. Part of Gon's hair was smoking very close to Killua's face. The rest of Gon was on top of him.

"Gon, get off!" he groaned to the face buried in his shoulder. There was a hand that was definitely not his placed dangerously high up on the inside of his thigh and gravity was slowly dragging it down towards his crotch.

"My body won't really move right now," Gon coughed into his shirt. "That was a lot of lightning, Killua."

"Did you seriously try out a technique that you had no way of stopping??" Killua yelled weakly, trying to roll out from underneath his friend. His entire body ached to the point of immobility. Gon felt heavier than normal. Impossibly heavy.

Gon chuckled nervously and Killua could feel the vibrations in his own rib cage. There was no way this was from his own aura alone. He had built up to the point where he could carry thousands of amps at a time - getting it all back at once was not going to paralyze him. He hadn't _used_ any lightning on Gon, and it hadn’t discharged accidentally while getting knocked out. He could feel his aura, and it was the same as it had been before Paper had slammed into them.

This had to be from the lightning that the orb had absorbed.

It was all pretty interesting - they'd managed to both knock each other unconscious with a combination of their auras, which Killua had never heard of anyone doing before. But for the moment, it was pretty irrelevant what they had done, because he just wanted to get out from under Gon before his hand slid any farther than it already had.

Too late.

There was no point in cursing gravity.

It wasn't like this was completely new. They had been twelve-year-olds stuck in a room for forty hours, after all. But there was a distinct difference between getting punched in the junk by a friend to see who would give up first, and having a friend's hand just gently resting there.

Even if said friend was temporarily paralyzed.

"You know, I've never kissed anyone before today," Gon began casually.

Killua gritted his teeth. This was absurdly unfair.

"Yeah, well I don't think earlier counts." Using his limited mobility, he tried to wiggle himself free, but considering the placement of Gon's hand, that turned out to be a really terrible idea.

"Why not?" Gon wanted to know.

"Because we're faking all this!" Killua tried to mask the fact that he was flustered with annoyance. "It's only a kiss if there's some kind of meaning behind it. Otherwise, your first kiss probably would have been with Mito-san."

"Hmmmmmm," Gon rumbled into his shoulder. "So what if we weren't pretending, and someone dared us to kiss - would that be real?"

"Why do you want to know all this?!? We're not going to do that!"

"Because I don’t know how this stuff is supposed to work, and it's really interesting!"

Killua took the deepest breath he could under the circumstances. Responding angrily, or with embarrassment, was going to make it all the more obvious that this situation was getting to him. He had to be calm. Patient. Just honest enough to be convincing. 

"Well, I guess it would be more real, since no one would be trying to fool anyone, so it's not by definition a lie. But I think it would depend on the attitude of the people kissing then. Do they really not care? Then I don't think it counts. But if they did, even a little, then..."

"So would it count for us?"

A person in control of himself would have said something like, "Well, it really would depend on the situation at the time." Nice and neutral, the opinion of someone who definitely didn’t care. But Killua was finally starting to regain motion in his extremities, and there was still a hand on his crotch. And it was Gon's and he didn't want to talk or even think about kissing him anymore. 

"No!" he forced his abdominal muscles to finally move and sat up. "It definitely wouldn't."

The still-paralyzed Gon rolled off of him, landing on his back with a thud. He was sweaty and flushed from the exertion, his olive skin rosy around his hairline and neck. A thin stream of blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were shining in the dappled light through the leaves of the trees. 

Killua couldn’t stand to look at him.

This had to stop. It was all getting too convoluted and confusing.

He fell back down, the energy expended in sitting all that he could handle for the moment. It was for the best, since Gon couldn’t see his face like that.

Gon just chuckled. “I really did miss you, Killua.”

There was a pause. A heavy one.

“It felt like I couldn’t really be myself without you. I almost always had to hold back. It was really lonely. Do you know what I mean?”

“Kinda,” Killua muttered.

Another lie.

He knew exactly how it felt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this is a day later than I wanted to post this, but I was doing my taxes. After this chapter, I think I'm going to have to switch to updates every two weeks. I have a lot to grade at the end of the semester, an article submission deadline, and an endowment to apply to, so life has gotten kind of hectic. I do have portions of every upcoming chapter written, I just need to finish them.
> 
> As I am plotting out future chapters, I find smut inevitable, so the rating is likely to go up soon. If anyone is super opposed to that, I guess I could do a cut scene or something.
> 
> Oh, and if it isn't obvious, I'm terrible at titles, so the chapter titles are all just lines from songs I listened to on repeat while writing said chapter. Yes, this song is from fifty shades of awful, but I don't care, because it was pretty much perfect to write a romantic fight to.


	6. Til every little piece is gone

"So, what kind of party are we going to, Killua?"

They were walking across town in the dusky twilight. It had crept up on Brassford just a little bit earlier than the day before, evidence of the rapidly approaching autumn. Somehow, both of them looked presentable. Killua wished he could take credit for the situation after all of his shopping efforts the day before. But he couldn't.

Earlier that day, he had insisted that Gon wear "clothes he would wear on a date" for Suzu's... chicken party? Or whatever it was called. Instead of asking his opinion, Gon had rushed off, saying he'd find something himself. It had been kind of annoying, but it also left Killua truly alone and unoccupied for the first time on this trip.

The time had been desperately needed.

After a long phone call with Alluka about her plans to arrive the following day, he hadn't really done much; just bought a hot chocolate that was more whipped cream than anything and sat in a cafe for several hours watching people enjoy what was left of the warm weather. He eventually remembered to sketch out the draft version of Suzu and Ila's birthday present. It was something he should have done weeks ago, but Gon's presence had pushed the thought out of his mind.

Between the solitude and the work, he felt able to really relax for the first time in days. He didn't have to pretend that he was, or was not, smitten with Gon.

Or worse, both at the same time.

It had also been a prime opportunity to sort out what exactly his feelings _were_. Of course he hadn't done that. It had taken every ounce of his mental energy to push the worries to the back of his mind over the duration of this trip, and he was committed to keeping them there.

Now as he and Gon were walking down the busy thoroughfare, he could see a variety of passers-by give the dark-haired man a second glance, and sometimes even a third. He had to begrudgingly admit to himself that, left to his own devices, Gon could actually dress like someone other than a park ranger. Which in this case meant just a pair of jeans that actually fit, a dark t-shirt that was a little more snug than usual, the green hunting jacket Killua had insisted he buy yesterday, and the dark brown steel-toed boots he was never without. Unpolished they looked like something you would wear to a construction site, but after a little loving care, the leather looked fairly fashionable, in a utilitarian sort of way. It really couldn't compare to Killua's own look - bright purple canvas sneakers, skinny black jeans that accented his long legs, a green plaid button-up that brought out the vibrancy of his eyes, a brown scarf, and a denim jacket rolled up at the sleeves - but Gon hadn't done bad for himself.

"Hey, Killua, what kind of party is this?" he asked again, completely oblivious to all the people who were checking him out, Killua included.

That was a good question.

"It's just a party to celebrate the end of them being single, I guess? Do the kind of non-couple-y stuff they won't be able to do when they're..." he tried to answer. "I don't really get it - they've been living together for a year, it's not like all of a sudden anything is going to actually change. And it's two parties, actually, one for her friends, one for his, then we'll meet up at this club later."

Gon hummed his understanding, then after a pause asked, "What if they're friends of both?"

"I don't know," because Killua really had no idea. The entire concept behind the event baffled him as well. "I guess they just pick?"

There was a pause.

"Well, so where am I supposed to go?"

"With me, moron. You don't know anyone else here."

"But, don't you want to spend time with Suzu without me? You said it was supposed to be not a couples thing."

"We're not actually dating, Gon. It's no big deal to me if you're there."

"Yeah... but they don't know that. Anyway, if it's the last chance for you to spend time together before she gets married, you should go by yourself. I'll go to Ila's party and make some new friends!"

The faint buzzing of a phone kept him from arguing. Killua checked his jacket pocket out of habit even though he knew it wasn't his.

"Mito-san!" Gon smiled as he picked up, launching into a language Killua didn't understand, smooth and rolling with a lot of repetitive sounds. He motioned for them to stop, and Killua sat on a bench while Gon made large looping circles on the sidewalk as he chatted. The first few moments of the call were rapidly paced, and based on the tone of his voice, it sounded like Gon was telling an exciting story. But after a few minutes, he began to speak a lot less. When he did his voice was lower, more comforting. It stayed that way for the remainder of the call.

When he hung up, he was uncharacteristically silent.

"So, how's that cabin?" Killua tried to break through the quiet when they were up and walking again. Gon looked, while not exactly sad, not very happy either.

"It's nice, she says. Really peaceful and there's a lot of snow..." Gon took a quick breath almost like he was nervous. "Hey, Killua... how do you think people are supposed to act when people die?"

It was hard to say what kind of answer Gon was hoping for, but Killua was certain he couldn't give him a normal one. His perspectives on death were decidedly _off_. He wasn't even sure how old he'd been the first time he'd killed a person. And Gon knew that.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know, it makes me feel... kinda... kinda..."

"Kinda what?"

Gon looked at him grimly, coming to a dead stop on the sidewalk. "When I thought Kite was dead, it hurt more than... I mean, I went _crazy._ But my grandma, _whānau_ ," he slipped into the same language as he had been speaking on the phone, "is gone and I don't feel what I'm supposed to. I'm sad that she's gone, but I don't..."

Instead of finishing his sentence, Gon just started to vigorously scratch the back of his head.

"Just say it."

"I don't _miss_ her the way Mito-san does," Gon's arm fell and he looked despondently at the ground. "It doesn't hurt every minute, and I can think about other stuff. I even forget sometimes that it happened at all. I feel like there might be something wrong with me. Am I a terrible person?"

"You're asking me that? I don't even know how many people I've killed."

"Yeah, but you stopped, Killua. I know it wasn't easy for you. I didn't quite get it, before, how tough it was to just change everything like that. But I see it now, when you spar with me, when you get impatient at lines in the store, when people annoy you - there's always a little piece of you that has to hold back. You couldn't do all that work and not be a good person."

Killua exhaled heavily. He needed to say something, anything, but his words were all caught up in his throat. It felt invasive to hear a thing so terrible and beautiful about him all at once. Gon could see what was probably the ugliest version of himself, a cold-blooded murderer, and he actively did not care about it... more than that, he found _something to like_ in that ugliness.

"And when it comes to death..." Gon continued softly, "well... you're sad about your brother, even though you won't talk about it. I can tell."

It was too much. The last thing he wanted to talk about was Illumi. Coming in at a close second was Gon losing it over Kite's death. And in third, of course, was any reaction whatsoever to the observation that had pretty much stripped him naked.

He settled on the one thing that he himself had been forced to learn about Gon in the most painful way possible. And it wasn't fluffy and it maybe wasn't that nice. But it was true, even though he had to actively remind himself of the fact pretty constantly.

"You're just a _person,_ Gon _._ "

Gon lifted his eyebrow, uncertain what he was getting at.

"You do bad things and good things sometimes, but this? This is just a normal thing, I'm pretty sure."

"Yeah, but Killua..."

He held up his hand to stop him.

"Did you feel like there was anything you could have done to keep your grandma alive?" he demanded, trying to be as practical as possible, with the intent of staying far away from conversations about who they _really were_ as people.

"No..." Gon worried his bottom lip with his teeth, "she was in her nineties and the doctors said..."

"Okay, then, did you feel like she hadn't lived a good life?"

"No! She had the best stories, and she was really happy."

That took care of the Kite situation, and it was obvious from the hitch in his voice that Gon had at least got that much. But the other pain, the kind that Mito knew and Gon didn't was something he wasn't really certain how to explain.

Though it was something Killua understood himself very well.

"We're you used to seeing her every day?" he meant to be matter-of-fact but his voice hushed anyway. "Was she the first person you spoke to in the morning, and the last person you spoke to at night?"

Gon took a long time answering, and when he did, his, "no," cracked in his throat.

"Well that's what Mito-san lost," Killua stretched his arms behind his head forcing his body to reflect a casual attitude that he definitely did not feel, "So I don't know why you're expecting to feel the same thing. Hell, your grandma'd probably be annoyed enough at Mito-san as it is. I know if I died, I wouldn't want Alluka to just mope around all the time. Your grandma definitely wouldn't want you being miserable too. Anyway, you'll miss her _plenty_ when you go back to Whale Island, or even call, and she isn't there."

How this line of talk was doing anything other than making this all worse, Killua couldn't be sure, but he didn't know how to stop himself.

"But it doesn't seem normal..." Gon muttered, mostly to himself. It seemed like there was something beyond all this that was gnawing at him, but it didn't make sense. Why would Gon _want_ to be normal?

"I don't think there's anything normal when it comes to feelings, idiot. And why do you care all of a sudden? You're as abnormal as they come and it never bothered you before."

Gon didn't respond, but he did start walking again. 

Killua wondered if he'd taken the whole casual thing just a bit too far.

"If you insist on going to Ila's," he tried to change the subject after a long silence, because that's what he'd want if he were Gon, "we should go to his restaurant first - it's closer."

"Oh no, that's alright," Gon responded softly. "I'll walk the whole way with you."

"Gon, you don't need to do that."

The mere whisper of an argument seemed to to lift Gon's spirits. "But I want to, Killua! Anyway, they're going to expect us to walk together."

"And who's to say I wouldn't walk _you,_ eh? I'm the one whose actually been to this city before."

"No, Killua, I would definitely walk you." 

The argument lasted all the way to Suzu's front door.

 

* * *

 

"So, Killua Haufman... tell us how you met _that guy_."

One of Suzu's friends, the pale, freckled short one with the red hair, slid next to him on the couch. She was holding a red plastic cup full of beer, and by the smell of her breath and the way she was smiling, it had to be her third. Or maybe fourth, considering how much was on her frilly pink dress. It was pretty impressive, since the party had been going on for less than a half hour.

"Huh?" he tried to pretend he didn't know what she was taking about, but it was likely impossible, considering the heat gathering in his cheeks.

Another friend, the curvy one with the sandy brown skin, dark cloud of curls, and a bright yellow shirt slid onto the couch on his other side. "Yeah tell us! He seems so _sweet_ , walking you all the way here..."

He had gone to the same school as these women, the least he could do was remember their names. Of course, they didn't actually know his, so maybe it was fair.

Having a fake name had been such a pain, although he was still Killua everywhere but in the school's registration office. Even after making Gon write "Kirima Haufman and Alluka Bauer" at least forty times, he still wasn't sure if he'd remember after he started drinking. Not that it would matter so much at this point. Since he and the _highly recognizable_ Gon Freecss were traveling together, the whole reason for having a fake identity was kind of gone. But after having one for years, just dropping it felt strange.

And in this crowd, it would open up too many lines of questioning. So they could go on thinking that Killua was a long-standing family nickname, that he was Alluka's half-brother, and that Bisky was their absentee aunt. The whole narrative had been exhausting to establish, and he didn't want to deal with it anymore.

"We knew each other when we were kids," Killua huffed, wishing they would go away. Parties were awkward, especially when they reminded him of how much of his spare time in school had been spent running down quick contract jobs that Knov had passed on to him, and how little of it had been spent making friends other than Suzu.

The woman of the hour was surrounded by her contractor friends. They were a rowdier bunch than her high school acquaintances and the other small collection of people from mysterious origins that Killua just mentally referred to as "miscellaneous." The bride-to-be and a tiny slip of a woman had just started setting a pair of handmade robots against each other in a sort of death match. It was intense, and he wanted break free from the two women who were hovering around to get a closer look.

Yellow Shirt flicked him in the nose, "We're talking to you. You can't pull that bad boy act with us anymore. We saw you turn around and watch him go when you thought he wasn't looking. That sigh you made. You're just a little kitten."

She was annoying him just enough that his embarrassment at having been seen took backseat to his irritation, driving him to pull together a chilly response to shut her up.

"Kittens have claws..."

If only he could remember her name...

"... _princess_."

"His ears are turning red!" Pink Dress squealed, completely ruining the effect, not that it had been a very good comeback anyway. 

"We want the details, pretty boy," Yellow Shirt swung her arm behind his back and leaned forward conspiratorially. "You obviously weren't hooking up as kids, so how did it happen?"

He kicked his feet up on the coffee table, and put his hands behind his head, knocking her away without causing any real damage. "Probably not your business."

"Hmmm well, how about you trade us?" Pink Dress tapped her fingers against her lips thoughtfully. 

"What could you possibly have that I want?" He wanted both of them to leave. If he hadn't noticed them in school, they probably weren't worth noticing now. 

Yellow Shirt laughed, "Well, we heard that you have a bit of a problem, Killua."

"What's that?"

He was going to kill Suzu, whatever she had told them. But what did she even know? Alluka's medical history, his Nen abilities, and the fact that Gon existed were the only real private things she knew, and the last one was now open for public consumption. In fact, it was what had him in this situation in the first place.

"Some kind of really high alcohol tolerance," Pink Dress was looking at her nails. "You can't get drunk."

"We know because we really wanted to see if you'd open up a little after a few drinks," Pink Dress leaned in, "but then Suzu said there was no chance."

The fact that random women wanted to see him intoxicated was bewildering, and kind of creepy. It was actually better that Suzu told them he couldn't get drunk. Unfortunately, instead of discouraging them, it had put them on his case.

"So?"

"Well, if you tell us," Pink Dress smiled happily, "we'll make sure you get as plastered as you want."

This woman was disturbingly chipper.

"How are you going to do that? And why the hell do you want to know anything about my life?"

She looked thoughtful, wrinkling her nose as though trying to find the best way to explain herself. "Hmm... well... I kind of... collect stories, you know?"

He half-smiled despite himself at her naive turn of phrase. It sounded like something his sister would say.

"And you were too weird in high school to not have one."

His grin dropped into a scowl.

"And as far as how?" Yellow Shirt cut in, turning on the couch so that she was cross-legged and facing him. "I'm basically an expert on drinking."

"A lush?" he snorted.

"A bartender. So I know just a little bit about alcohol."

He rolled his eyes. These people were amateurs. "Nice try, but no bartender's gotten me drunk before."

Yellow Shirt grabbed him by the chin and turned his face so he was facing her. She had absolutely no concept of personal space. At first it had been annoying, but now it was starting to really piss him off.

"That's just my night job," she breezed.

"Yeah?" The question was more of a challenge than a real request for clarification.

"During the day, I'm a chemist."

  

"It's called grain alcohol," she waved the cheap looking bottle around, the liquid inside swishing harmlessly. The label said "Ever..." something, though she wouldn't hold it still long enough for him to read. "Neutral spirits. The most efficient distribution system for highly concentrated ethanol. If consumed in large quantities, a normal person will need to be hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. But you're not a normal person, are you?"

"What?"

They were standing in front of Suzu's workbench, turned makeshift bar. Almost everyone else at the party had gathered around what sounded like a feats of strength competition between one of the wildcard miscellaneous folks, and a large man who looked like he lifted cinderblocks for a living. No one was paying attention to the three stragglers around the bar, which was a relief.

"We saw you drink turpentine in the art room on a dare," Pink Dress threw back what had to be her fifth or sixth drink at this point. Her freckles were slowly disappearing in the flush that covered her skin, but she seemed no more or less affected than she had a half hour ago.

"Okay, so what's so special about this?" he deliberately neglected to respond. "I know what ethanol is, I'm not an idiot."

Yellow Shirt didn't seem convinced. "Well, what do you normally use to try to get wasted?"

"Whiskey, vodka, tequila... once I tried gin but I don't love the taste."

"This has twenty-five percent more alcohol than the strongest whisky I know of. The problem with anything else is you can't drink it fast enough. My guess is, thanks to some kind of genetic curse, your body starts to break alcohol down before there's enough in your system to get you anywhere. So the only way around that?"

"More alcohol at once!" Pink Dress clapped.

"Aren't you worried _I'll_ need hospitalized?" he asked, grabbing the neck of the bottle and pulling it from her hands.

She lifted her eyebrow, "You drank an entire gallon of turpentine, and then came in first in a long distance run, even though we saw you and Suzu tearing apart some kind of machine in  the shop classroom while the _same race_ was going on."

"Whatever it takes to kill you, it sure isn't this," Pink Dress took the bottle from him and took a dainty swig. "Yuck, this is gross."

Killua moved to snatch it back, but Pink Dress held up her hand, "Nope. You gotta give us your phone first."

"My phone?"

"You've never been drunk before," Yellow Shirt explained. "We don't know what you'll do, but you _definitely_ don't want to start drunk texting your boyfriend if it turns out you get sad. Trust us, you'll be grateful in the morning."

"Hell no! You two are going to do something with it."

She rolled her eyes. "The bad boy act might be a farce, but you're still terrifying. We actually don't want to make you mad."

Killua sighed and handed over his phone. This wasn't going to work, but he might as well humor them since it didn't seem like they'd be letting up anytime soon. It would be nice to get a little tipsy, he had always thought. Maybe he'd stop thinking about his problems for a little bit.

"His name is Gon, actually," he said as Pink Hair giggle and handed him the bottle. He put it to his lips and took an enormous swig.

Grain alcohol tasted like _ass_.

 

"So after the guy nearly dies, and breaks my heart before I even _realized_ he could break my heart, since I'm fucking FOURTEEN and who knows that shit then? Well, after all that he just acts like he, you know, said a minor little thing in the heat of a stressful moment. And I accept his half-assed, whiny apology because I don't know what else to do. I don't want to be fucking mad at him, and on top of that it feels like no one's ever really even _known_ me before him, and then we go our separate ways and now all of a sudden he's back after _five years_  and none of this is resolved, but now there's kisses, and _touching_ and I don't know what to do!"

Relationship problems were a real sign that a relationship existed and it was not made up. It was definitely fine to talk about this. Part of his deal with those two had been to tell them how he and Gon met, after all.

And talking felt surprisingly good.

Even though he and Gon were not really together, so these obviously weren't issues. But they would be issues if they _were_ together, and since they were pretending, it was definitely okay to talk about them.

Definitely okay. 

Yellow Clothes looked confused and a little upset, "If he's forcing you into something you don't want..."

"No no no, it's not like that, of course I want to fucking kiss him, have you _seen_ him?"

The girls looked at each other and shrugged. Pink Clothes giggled a little bit.

Killua pointed at her, but his hand wouldn't go in the direction he wanted. It was a bizarre feeling, though he couldn't find it in himself to be bothered about it. "See, she knows. He's so hot, and like, just, so _good_ like the damn sun or something."

"The sun?"

"Yeah, cause it's really bright, and lights up everything, and it makes everything grow and... you know... that might be kind of an excessive pedestal to put someone on..."

"Does he know you feel like this? Still hurt?" Pink Clothes threw back her... tenth? drink. She looked surprisingly okay.

"No, he's oblivious," Killua spat.

"Do you expect him to read your mind?" she asked brightly. "Because he's not going to know unless you tell him. Unless what you really want is for everything to explode and you to pretend it's not partially your fault because he _should have_ known."

He took another swig of the terrible white liquor and felt it burn its way down his throat.

"He should have, though!" he argued without much substance. Because she was probably right but since none of this was real anyway, it was fine to argue about it.

Yellow Shirt shrugged, "Maybe the things you like most about him also make him oblivious. Has he tried to talk about any of this at all himself?"

Killua was about to say no, but the more he considered things, the more possible it seemed that Gon actually _had_ tried to say something. A few times, actually, though they seemed a little hazy at the moment. He was having a hard time remembering what was real and what was pretend.

Between that and the strange sluggishness in his body, was the oven cleaner he was drinking actually working?

"Well, okay... he might have tried, but maybe I don't want to talk about it now, you know? Cause... who knows what he'll say? And he's _back_ and I just..."

"You missed him," they both said together.

He nodded, taking another drink, "You know, you two are pretty okay. I think I ignored you a lot in school. Sorry bout that."

Pink Clothes patted his shoulder, "It's okay. You ignored pretty much everyone. We didn't take it personal." 

 

* * *

 

Grain alcohol was beautiful. Wonderful. Maybe better than chocolate, Killua couldn't decide.

He hadn’t felt this relaxed since… maybe when Kite was still alive - or he should say, when Kite was still an adult - and he and Gon had just spent days on end finding weird bugs and fish and animals. He’d been so worried for days or maybe even years, about… well, pretty much everything. And now he could barely even understand why getting to spend all this time with Gon, his _best friend_ could ever have been that upsetting. So what if he made his heart race? It was _fine._

So what if couldn’t stand still without slowly drifting to the side? It was _fine_.

After what kind of seemed like a blur of events - arm wrestling a three hundred pound mountain of a man and accidentally breaking his wrist, sticking various hunks of metal to himself with electromagnetism, arguing with Suzu about whether or not creating a burst of ball lightning was a good party trick, and at some point all but begging for his phone so he could check on Gon - he was leaning against the sticky bar at some kind of club. Almost everyone had walked over here together from Suzu's, and the people who had spent the evening at Ila's restaurant were expected to join them at any minute.

He'd know exactly where they were if he had his phone. Pink and Yellow were holding it hostage, though. He hadn't tried to get it back. He wasn't drunk enough to fight two unarmed, Nen-less women who seemed about as strong as the eleven-year-old version of his sister. He doubted that was possible.

But it was official, he was definitely drunk now. He was about to share the news with everyone, but briefly remembered that he had done so on the walk over. The resounding "WE KNOW," his announcement had elicited from the entire party made him reconsider. So instead, he was using the present moment to run his fingers over his lips, marveling at the strange feeling of the skin there. Had they always felt like this? Who knew?

"Killua!" he heard Gon's voice from somewhere... how had he not noticed he'd arrived? The sound made him smile, because he was certain Gon would appreciate the merits of grain alcohol, and maybe they could be drunk together. That seemed like a normal thing that a person was supposed to do with his best friend. Unlike the other things they had been doing which weren't normal friend things at all. Although, when he was honest with himself, which he was allowing for the moment, they were also not things he particularly wanted to stop.

And then Gon's arms were around him, pulling him close and whispering, "Don't worry, Killua," before he felt hands on his face and lips on his.

It was a chaste kiss, but emphatic and assertive, like Gon was trying very hard to prove a point. His brain was moving too slowly to really think about much more than that. Almost as quickly as it had happened, Gon pulled his lips away and tilted their foreheads together.

"Killua, you smell drunk," his voice sounded a little panicked, and almost completely sober, which was disappointing.

But there was no time to answer, because both of them were being picked up and spun around.

"YOU TWO PUNKS!" a vaguely familiar voice bellowed, and then a blur in grey trousers and a black buttoned shirt was squeezing their shoulders so hard Killua couldn't catch a proper breath. It was hard to tell if this person was happy to see them, or furious. He was feeling too relaxed to struggle free, so he just hung there, boneless, as the man knocked their heads together.

When whoever it was finally set them down, the first thing he did was demand to know why they hadn’t told him. Killua didn't answer right away, in part because he had no idea what he was talking about, but mostly because he was experiencing the rapture that came with the realization that he was taller than Knuckle Bine. He hadn't seen him in so long that he'd kind of forgotten he existed, but that didn't stop him from enjoying the view of the top of his head. It felt almost as good as when he'd been able to look Leorio in the eyes without moving his neck.

Being tall was wonderful.

Knuckle was drunk and berating Gon for keeping his relationship with Killua a secret. It was loud, even for the club, and drew a lot of attention from the people at the bar. Gon was rubbing his neck looking exasperated, as though they'd been having this conversation a lot.

"People want to know these things," Knuckle screeched. "Especially people who nearly died with you! You fools shouldn't keep secrets!"

"Knuckle, I told you earlier, it wasn't a secret. We hadn't seen each other in a really long time. It's kind of new."

Knuckle's demeanor changed almost immediately. "Oh yeah, that walk on the beach... thing," he nodded. "That was good, Gon. You sound like a real romantic guy."

It struck Killua at that point that Gon was making him look bad. Always the one to do sweet, nice things, while he just sputtered and blushed. Maybe everyone thought Gon deserved better? Even in the hypothetical it was unsettling, so he grabbed Gon's shoulders and pulled him close, his head slamming into his chest with a very unromantic thud.

"He sure is!" he tried to be enthusiastic, but even in his state of intoxication he could tell that his voice didn't sound like himself. "You don't even know the half of it. This guy, I mean, wow. Super romantic."

Knuckle, to his great discredit, believed him completely. His bottom lip wobbled, and tears started to well up in his eyes.

Gon, on the other hand, lifted up his head and looked at Killua like he had suddenly grown an extra set of nostrils.

"How was the party, darling?" Killua rubbed their noses together.

He could hear Knuckle sniffle loudly as Gon pulled away, taking a large enough step back that there was real distance between them. The space felt enormous for some reason, like an official rejection of his efforts to look like a good boyfriend.

"I-it was really fun!" Gon looked shaken. "I didn't even have to make new friends, because lots of people I already knew were there. Tons of people we know took the Hunter Exam with Ila... Menchi, Buhara, a bunch of people from Greed Island. Why didn't you tell me that he was a Hunter?"

"Ila's a Hunter?" as far as Killua knew, he was a chef. Suzu had never said anything else, and she definitely knew it would have been important information to share.

Gon scratched his head, "Well... I think so?"

"We definitely passed the Exam together," Knuckle, though slurring a bit, seemed able to explain. "He was the youngest guy there, fifteen or something. But after the Exam he just started working in regular old restaurants, never quite figured out why. Not that I'm complaining, he makes the best food I've ever eaten."

"He did say he never learned Nen, though," Gon offered. "He just wanted to pass the exam so he could get money to be a chef. Kind of like Leorio."

That explained it. Killua had always kind of wondered what happened to people who, for one reason or another, never took the next phase of the exam. He already knew what happened when people took it backwards.

"By the way, Killua, Leorio is _here!_ "

"Huh?"

"He knows Ila somehow, so he came! But, he drank too much, so we had to take him back to his hotel, right Knuckle?"

But Knuckle wasn't there anymore. He had wandered off to talk to some other friends, to Gon's apparent relief.

"I tried to get Knuckle to stay in his room too,” he confessed, “but he says he's okay. I think drinking just makes him really, really loud and forgetful. He asked about you a lot... and hey, Killua, how did you manage to get drunk anyway?"

"Oh, there were just these girls," he shrugged vaguely, trying to remember exactly what had happened, but falling short. "How is Leorio doing?"

"He's really mad at me for not telling him about us sooner.”

“He is?” Killua swallowed nervously. Angry Leorio could cause some serious havoc in this scenario. 

“Killua, it's really not fun, lying to our friends,” Gon sighed.

He knew all about that. It had been his life for the past five years. Although he hadn’t expected running into people that _both_ of them knew so near the place he had spent all the time hiding from them.

Gon shook his head a little, like he didn’t want to think about whatever was on his mind. "Anyway what about those girls, Killua? What did they do?"

But Killua was too distracted to respond.

The music was booming, sensual and intense, but down on the dance floor Suzu and Ila were dancing to a completely different rhythm, swinging and spinning and laughing. Occasionally one would pull the other in for a quick, chaste kiss, and then they’d smile and jump apart again. Surrounded by a sea human bodies grinding together, they were an island to themselves. The rest of the combined two parties was dancing with everyone else, or at the bar like he and Gon were.

He smiled at the thought that Suzu found someone who wanted to dance her way.

He tried to find the women who had his phone so he could text Alluka, maybe even send her a picture, but he could only spot Knuckle. The man had once more wandered away from the crowd of people he'd been talking to. Now he was by himself, dancing with great intensity on top of a speaker.

Watching him, Killua started to laugh, and found he couldn’t stop. He fell into the bar, and then into Gon, who caught him immediately, one hand on his arm, the other around his waist.

“You okay?” he asked, craning down to look at his face.

Killua looked up at him. He could see the stubble on Gon’s chin, and he wanted to touch it just for the sake of feeling the rough texture against his skin.

“On the speaker,” he snickered, gesturing upwards with his chin. “It’s Knuckle. He’s just…” it was impossible to finish the sentence without exploding.

Gon craned his neck to see while Killua tried to stand back up and calm down.

“Knuckle _is_ having a really good time. Oh… and… there goes his shirt. What’s he yelling?”

Killua bent over, dissolving into laughter again.

“I feel like he doesn't know the rules of this place,” Gon muttered.

“There’s not really _rules_ , you just move with the music,” Killua threw back the drink the bartender had given him awhile ago, hissing in satisfaction when the alcohol liquid seared the back of his throat. _“_ But I think Knuckle’s telling everyone he’s gonna kick their asses, which is pretty much the _only_ thing that’s not really allowed.”

Gon didn’t respond. He surveyed the crowd the same way he analyzed an opponent. Except with a lot less excitement. Something was up with him, he seemed tense and uncomfortable. Other than the kiss, and just now to keep Killua from falling, he had barely touched him at all. He had been a constant physical presence for days, and now that Killua finally felt like he could handle it, Gon had stopped.

Killua slouched against the bar and sat down his empty glass, feeling frustrated, but not sure what to do about it. Bright colors danced at the edge of his vision, and he thought that maybe this was just another thing that happened after prolonged exposure to alcohol, when Pink and Yellow were at his side, proving they weren't hallucinations. Pink was just as flushed, but entirely in control of her faculties. Yellow hadn't touched a drop of alcohol the entire night, and so she looked exactly the same. It made Killua feel briefly messy and embarrassed.

"Killua, dance with us!" Pink grabbed his hand and pulled, ignoring Gon completely. While she had his attention, Yellow leaned over and whispered in his ear that he should just play along. He almost argued with them, but he thought this might be a good a time as any to get his phone back.

"Eh, I'm gonna go dance with these guys," Killua said over his shoulder as he was dragged away. "You wanna come?"

“Oh, I'll just stay here, thanks," Gon responded brightly, though his eyes were unreadable

As soon as they hit the floor, the girls stuck themselves against him, one on each side. They started moving like all three of them were planning on going home together. His face turned an angry rose, not really certain how to get them to just _leave him alone_. Before he could pull himself together enough to push them away, Pink stood on her tiptoes and asked if Gon looked jealous yet.

"What?" said into her ear, the music almost deafening.

"You looked sad, like he wasn't paying attention to you. We thought maybe we'd help."

He was about to say, no, he didn't want their help, and the fact that they kept giving it to him was strange and disturbing, but glancing across the room, he saw Gon, and his response died in his throat.

Gon was leaning against the bar, arms crossed over his chest. He couldn’t see his eyes, but he could feel the heat of his glare and the waves of intensity rolling off of him.

He was pissed.

It couldn't be jealousy, at least not the normal kind. But Gon was selfish, and he did like attention, and right now Killua wasn't giving him any. Of course, when he actually had, he'd reacted oddly. He had no idea what Gon wanted right now.

But thinking about it made him wonder what it would actually feel like if instead of two distant high school acquaintances dancing with him, it was Gon, their bodies pressing together, moving together. Gon’s breath would ghost across his neck and...

Shit, there was no point in denying it.

He wanted Gon so. bad.

Admitting it to himself openly was such a relief. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t done it before. The nagging reminder that this wasn’t real, that they were best friends, nothing more was a distant call in the back of his mind. But Gon had come with him. He’d insisted on it. He'd kissed him a few minutes ago. Just how not real was that?

The music threaded through his veins like electricity. He closed his eyes, trying to center himself from the dizziness that kept nearly overwhelming him. After a few deep breaths, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, Killua…" Gon whispered in his ear, "wanna dance with me?”

Was there a reason to say no? There had been, at some point, but he couldn’t remember it. And he wanted to dance with him more than could remember wanting anything in a long time. Maybe ever. 

“Okay.”

He looked down, and the conspiratorial women were looking at him with unreadable smirks. Yellow rose up onto her tiptoes and all but shouted into his ear, “She’s Hana, and I’m Rosalie, since you can’t seem to remember. And you’re welcome.”

He felt a hand slipping his phone back into his jacket pocket as she fell back down to her feet. The two women turned and began weaving their way towards the bar. He felt Gon’s hands on his shoulders, turning him around. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a pale freckled hand slip into Rosalie's back pocket, and a cloud of dark hair leaning gently onto the shorter woman’s head.

And then he couldn’t see anything but Gon.

The look on his face could really only be classified as determined.

Killua leaned down until their foreheads were touching. The pulsating crowd of bodies had pushed them into what was basically a corner, more private than any other space on the dance floor. The people around them were all strangers.

“What’s up with you?” he yelled over the music. “Are you mad or something?”

“I didn’t think I knew how to dance like this,” Gon shouted back. “But I think I do now.”

He felt strong hands grab his hips, pulling them together. Their foreheads were still touching as Gon moved his arms until his hands were resting on the small of Killua’s back, holding them together. Even through his shirt, he could feel the heat of his fingers.

And then Gon started to move.

It wasn’t anything elaborate, but that didn’t matter, because the small gyrating circles he was making with his hips were going to drive Killua out of his mind.

He shuddered involuntarily, lifting up his arms and draping them over Gon’s shoulders, both to hold himself up, and because he didn’t know what else to do.

One of Gon’s hands slid into his back pocket, and Killua involuntarily leaned forward, pushing their chests closer together. The motion slid their heads in different directions, Gon’s stubble glancing across his collarbone and neck. A small voice at the back of his mind told him he needed to step away, or Gon was going to notice how into this he really was, but he didn’t listen to it.

Gon pulled his head back, like he wanted to say something, grazing Killua’s skin with his jaw all over again. It made him tremble, and he didn’t know if there was any point in hiding it anymore.

Dark eyes looked up at him, full of every sinful thought Killua had ever had in his life.

The distance between them was nearly infinitesimal.

Throwing away the small amount of inhibition that remained, Killua dropped his arms so he could frame Gon’s face with his hands.

He closed the gap between them with his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I mentioned with the last update, I've got to switch to an every-two-weeks update schedule. Although other chapters may be easier to write than this one. Making the main character get progressively drunker using this perspective was a bitch. 
> 
> The term "whānau" is Maori, and although not exactly the same as "ohana" (like from Lilo and Stitch), has a similar linguistic history and complex definition as the family or small community unit. I chose this language instead of Hawaiian because Hawaiian does not have a "g" sound, or, in fact, many letters at all. I really wish individual cultures were explored more in the HxH universe, because I really want to know more about Whale Island, and I love the idea of a Pacific Island culture being represented.


	7. How can I convince you it's me I don't like

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the idea of waking up somewhere and not knowing how you got there and being unable to remember the night before is triggering for you, you might want to skip the first section. Also a brief mention of child abuse, or whatever you choose to call Killua's childhood training.

Something had died inside his skull and was rotting there.

No, not just his skull; his entire body.

His mouth was dry, and he had to piss, but opening his eyes might actually kill him. Also, where _was_ he? Because most of him was laying on top of something very firm, and very warm, not like any mattress he had ever…

Shit. It was breathing.

Killua opened his eyes.

“Are you alright?” Gon asked, shirtless beneath him. Killua was lying on his chest, hand splayed across his stomach. The trail of dark hair that descended from Gon's belly button to disappear under the covers was tickling the sensitive skin between Killua's pale, long fingers. He needed to move, to get off of him _immediately_ but he wasn’t certain that he could do it without puking everywhere.

Holy fuck he was naked.

He sat up in a panic. Black spots flickered across his line of vision almost immediately afterward and he fell back against the headboard with a thunk. Even though the sheets covered up anything that mattered, he pulled them up to his chin.

He didn't really want to look at the bed's other resident, but did so out of sheer necessity.

Gon wasn’t technically shirtless. Not technically, but the front of his t-shirt had been shredded into ribbons, revealing his bare torso. His collarbone was sprinkled with mouth-sized bruises and even a few teeth marks.

The owner of those teeth started to hyperventilate.

“Let me get you some water,” Gon jumped out of the bed. He was still in his jeans, but the belt loops were ripped off and the top button was missing. Killua closed his eyes, and leaned back against the headboard. A moment later he could hear the heavy tread of booted feet against ceramic tile in the bathroom, and then running water splashing in the sink.

“There’s some painkillers in my bag,” Gon called out over the sound of the tap. “They’ll make your head feel better if you take them, okay?” 

“What happened?” Killua croaked out. His voice sounded like a teetering heap of rusted metal collapsing in on itself.

And that was being generous.

Gon didn’t answer immediately, and for a few moments, Killua wasn’t certain if he had even heard. But after returning with the water, Gon pulled on the nearest available shirt and sat at the foot of the bed. He wasn’t too close, but the distance wasn’t far either. Without a helpful task to complete he looked a little lost.

“Um… er… what does K-what do you remember?” he stammered, not making eye contact until the end of the sentence.

Killua sipped the water, which felt wonderful in his mouth and absolutely horrible once it got to his stomach. He tried to sort through the scrambled bits of memory that remained from the night before, but it was like someone had cut giant holes in his brain.

“These girls from school figured out how to get me drunk… then I met up with you at this disgusting club," he tried to pull together the scrambled pieces of what had happened after that, but there was too much noise and flashes of light to sort through. "Um... Knuckle was there… and then we…”

Dancing, he remembered dancing with those girls, damn it, what were their names? And Gon, he'd danced with him too.  Not just that, though…

A tiny fragment of his memory sparked as he grazed against it, and then his mind was filled with a thousand shattered bits of a single moment.Gon’s mouth on his, eager chapped lips, the hot exchange of their breath, fingers in his hair pulling him closer and closer. Their hips together, rolling in time with some kind of music. But nothing after that. No smirk or shock on Gon's face as they pulled apart, no sputtering blush, no coming back for a second go, no awkward laughs, no happiness, no disgust. Just nothing. A complete blank.

He couldn't remember a single reaction from Gon at all.

But he had kissed Gon. For real this time. He had wanted to do it so badly; _that_ he could remember, as though his subconsciousness had branded the admission to the inside of his skull and was never going to let him forget it. But whatever he wanted, he shouldn’t have done it, because, even ignoring everything else that could possibly happen as a result of kissing his best friend,all he could remember from that event were bits and pieces. The fact that he could recall what Gon tasted like was just meaningless torture if he didn't remember anything else.

He had quite possibly obliterated his first friendship, one that had managed to last a war, near death, and over five years of no contact, and he couldn't even remember the details. 

“We were dancing,” Gon started to fill him in, taking his silence for forgetfulness. “And then–”

“I know that part, idiot, you don’t have to say it!” Killua shouted. The echo of his own voice bounced around in his head, making him wince. He could feel his face, neck, chest, and arms all blushing furiously.

Gon blinked twice. “After um, well, Killua started acting very tired and confused, so I took us back to our room. I had to carry you some of the way because you said your legs didn’t work.”

He was acting neutral. Killua didn't even know Gon had the capacity to act neutral, but he _did,_ and it was almost worse than if he were disgusted. There was no point in dwelling on it, though, since there was something more important to figure out.

“But your shirt,” Killua began gruffly, trying to unpack everything all at once. “And my… clothes. And those… ugh… those _marks._ Gon, just tell me!”

“Oh,” Gon unconsciously tugged on his collar, giving another glimpse of the series of hickies and bite marks, “it's okay, Killua, don't worry about my clothes. They ripped when you wouldn’t let go of my shirt," the neutrality cracked for a moment as he smiled fondly. "I think you were afraid you'd fall. It got torn, and your hand got caught on my belt and then everything ripped when you tried to pull your hand free."

Killua looked down at his hand. His fingers was covered in the small regular lines a zipper might make if you scraped skin across it violently

"You pulled really hard, and it yanked us both onto the bed," Gon chuckled. The guarded neutrality fell away a little more. "It was really funny, Killua! We couldn’t stop laughing for a long time. That’s when you got the idea to take off _your_ shirt, I think someone spilled beer on it and it was still kind of wet and smelly. I didn’t realize till just now that you’d taken everything off, actually, I guess I was laughing too much...”

Killua groaned like a wounded animal.

“I think, um,” Gon paused, smile fading back into a mild facsimile of itself, “Killua, um I think you were feeling kind of... uh... sexy? after that. It's okay, you've never been drunk before, you didn't know what you would feel like. The first time I got drunk I couldn't stop crying, actually. Leorio was so embarrassed..."

Killua cleared his throat, and Gon fell into a fidgety discomfort that obliterated his ability to communicate anything meaningful. He stood up and started to pace.

"But um... anyway, that’s when the stuff on my neck happened. I didn’t… I mean… stopping wasn’t… but you were so confused, Killua. I didn’t think you were quite sure what was going on, otherwise you probably wouldn't be doing that, I mean, not with me at least, so I was going to get up, I swear. But right after I’d decided to maybe... go for a walk or something? It was hard to get up, Killua is so strong and I was afraid of hurting him... I didn't want to leave you but... anyway... I'd decided and then you just stopped, and started snoring on my chest. That's why I'm still wearing my boots, I didn't want to wake y-”

“I get it,” Killua interrupted flatly. “So we didn’t fuck, or something stupid like that?”

Gon turned, his nostrils flaring and his voice was tight. The room seemed to shrink until they were nearly on top of each other, even with an entire bed and two extra feet between them.

“Killua should know that I would never, ever have sex with anyone too drunk to know what he was doing. Especially when, I mean, no matter how much I–”

“Just **stop** , okay?”

Gon wasn't the only one who could sound dangerous.

The stammering stopped. Gon looked almost terrified, or maybe just really... was he _sad_?

Killua's was at war, torn between shrugging off the entire situation so Gon wouldn't be upset, or doing what he needed to be okay himself. This was no one's fault and everyone's and especially his and wanted to punch the wall until all of his fingers were broken because the first thing Illumi had ever taught him on a job was to never ever ever lose control when you weren't completely secure. And maybe Illumi was a terrible abusive dick, and maybe he was even dead due to his own stupidity but he had also not been wrong about this.

Right now, Killua couldn't take care of Gon's feelings and his own at the same time.

“Just give me some space, damn it!" he demanded, instantly regretting his tone.

There was a brief flicker of hurt in Gon's eyes, then it fluttered away. He nodded, them smiled as though he realized what was going on, “Hm. Okay. I’ll go get us some breakfast this time! You should feel better in a half hour, or so and–”

“No,” Killua said into his hands, trying to hide himself away from any effect his words might have. “I need more time than that. You should go find Knuckle or something. Call Mito-san and see how she is. I have to go to the wedding rehearsal this afternoon, anyway. I’ll just see you afterwards at Ila’s restaurant. At six.”

“But, Killua, don't you want to…”

“Just _go_ , Gon!” he didn’t lift his head.

He heard Gon rustling through some clothing, then walk into the bathroom. The water didn't run. He didn't shave, or even brush his teeth. He was just changing in there. Privately.

To give Killua some space.

When he strode out of the room with a tentative, "Um... bye Killua..." five minutes later, the space was so thick Killua was choking on it. His throat felt tight and dry, and he wasn't certain if it was from the alcohol or his anxiety. He tried to clear the dryness away, but one cough turned into a second so deep that the tears welled up in his eyes. Then the coughing wouldn't stop, shockwaves that racked through his whole body again and again, till he was quivering.

The coughing stopped, but the shaking didn't.

He had taught himself something when he was four, the first of many quiet lessons shared with no one but himself. He'd felt the pull of the pliers on his fingernail, the sharp pain that screamed and howled through his bones all the way to his teeth. But hadn't made a single noise. He'd looked up at his mother with defiant pride in his eyes and tears running down his cheeks. Tears were a thing his body just did in response to pain. He couldn't make them stop then, though eventually he'd learn.

Not that it mattered, because the lesson stuck.

It didn't count as crying if you didn't make a sound.

 

A sharp knock at the door cut through his stupor. Before he could even lift himself out of bed there was another, and another. They slammed into his head like punches, and he felt dizzy all over again.

"Nii-chan!" the fist on the door was insistent. "Nii-chan, let me in!"

He tried to respond, but his voice was ragged and quiet and didn't go anywhere.

His sister's yelling died down into a mutter just as he was wiggling free of his blanket prison to let her in. Before he could stand, he heard a loud "Hai!" as the lock mechanism in the door slid open.

"Thanks, Nanika," Alluka's eyes slid back into blue.

Since when could she do this? What was going on with the world? Every time he fell asleep he woke up to new insanity. He had gotten drunk somehow, kissed Gon in a way that he couldn't take back or remember, and now his sister was basically omnipotent?

"Oh wait," Alluka's eyes lost their focus and she started to wobble. "That took a lot out of me, wow." There was a stumble and a thump and she toppled into his arms only half a second after he made it to her side.

"What are you doing, you dummy??" he frantically lifted her, realizing afterwards that the only piece of clothing he had bothered to put on for his long sulk in bed was the underwear he'd been wearing the previous evening. Someone had definitely spilled beer down his back, because he could still smell it.

"You wouldn't open the door!" she sleepily scolded into his chest. "I was worried."

"Just because I didn't instantly open the door doesn't mean I was dead! I was sleeping."

"Why would you be sleeping right now??" she lifted her head, looking him in the eyes with an angry, if somewhat dizzy glare.

"I had a long night, that's all..." he sighed.

But she wasn't having it.

"On my way from the train station I found Gon hanging out in the park with this loud guy and like three hundred dogs. He looked as miserable as I've ever seen anyone and he refused to come up to the room after he walked me to the hotel. Are you two having a fight?"

He sat her down on the nest of pillows and blankets where he'd been spending the entire morning, and dug through the jumble of clothes on the floor to find his shirt. "Why didn't you call me to pick you up?" he demanded instead of responding. "You were supposed to do that."

"My train was early and I wanted the walk," she said simply. "Anyway, you're not really in any condition to pick anyone up, you can hardly stand up straight. What happened? Are you sick? Why are you two fighting?"

"It's nothing, I just feel like shit. I got drunk last night and I think I'm hung over. Let's watch tv," Killua muttered, feeling bad almost immediately afterwards for his tone. "They've been marathoning that wedding dress show you like all week."

Bright blue eyes morphed to black.

"Gon is sad," Nanika said insistently.

Alluka had tried to explain once how Nanika experienced the world. Killua hadn't understood most of it, which was probably the whole point. What he generally grasped was that something about reality did not come natural to Nanika. The world where everyone else lived was inherently foreign to her. Even though Alluka couldn't remember a time that Nanika hadn't been a part of her, neither of them had even realized they were two different entities until Alluka learned to talk. Even as a young toddler, Alluka learned words by the dozen. For years all Nanika could manage was Killua's name.

It wasn't because she was unintelligent. The exact opposite. The only thing sharper than her mind was her curiosity. But spontaneous language did not come easy. Even now, sentences in particular took an enormous amount of effort outside of the balance-restoring demands that followed wishes that no one had made in years.

Because balance was necessary to Nanika in a way that even Alluka didn't understand.

"I messed up, okay?" Killua spat, trying not to look at the slowly blinking pools of black. He knew there was comfort and understanding there, and he didn't want or deserve either.

Nanika took his hand and squeezed it.

"I love Killua," she said softly.

Volume modulation was even harder for her to both understand and implement. Her fingers moved clumsily against his, stroking his hand in the same comforting gesture he used to calm her down.

"Nii-chan, what happened?" Alluka asked, cupping her hand against his cheek to lift his face to hers.

"I don't know," he said honestly, looking anywhere but her eyes. "I just know that I messed up, and I don't know how to fix it."

"Killua is sad," Nanika stroked his hand frantically. "I love Killua."

He pulled her close and buried his face into her shoulder.

"I love you too."

They spent the next hour curled up on the bed, watching women try on wedding gowns and spend money their parents didn't have. After a few more glasses of water, the physical effects of his hangover ebbed away. Making fun of entitled brides with horrible fashion sense was a welcome distraction. The three of them had done this hundreds of times before, in hotel rooms all over the world, when a Hunter license bought international television access, and the only thing they had was each other.

"Are you ready to talk about it yet?" Alluka sleepily tipped her head back onto his shoulder during a commercial.

"Huh?" he sat up, knocking her into the mattress.

"What happened last night," she said, looking up at him. "Why you're so upset. Why Gon is going to be arrested for animal hoarding in a public space."

"I don't think that's actually a crime."

"Well, he's going to get fleas then," she gathered her long hair into a sloppy ponytail and tied it with an elastic from her wrist. "It's just statistics when you're around that many strays."

"It wouldn't be the first time," Killua smirked.

Alluka laughed, "Sorry, nii-chan, but you've told me 'That Time that Gon Got Fleas' like four times. If you don't feel up to talking about it, it's okay, but I feel kind of..." she stared off into the distance for a moment, "we both feel kind of guilty. This is probably our fault at least a little."

"More than a little," he put his arms behind his head and leaned back into the headboard.

Alluka rolled her eyes, "You're the one who let a sixteen-year-old tell you what to do with your love life. But really nii-chan, I'm sorry. We're both sorry. We just thought you needed a little push, but it turned out more like a kick."

Her voice was sardonic but her eyes were not.

It was bad enough, his emotions making him feel rotten. Even worse when they spilled over to the point that Gon, who was just better off being ignorant of things like this, got involved. But things crossed a line when they started to affect Alluka. He was supposed to be protecting her, not making her upset.

He never expected keeping himself emotionally healthy would end up being part of that. Apparently it was.

"If I had just been honest, this probably wouldn't even be a thing," he admitted. Alluka hummed, her attention drawn back to the screen as the commercial ended. Their conversations always went like this, drawing out over hours or even days.

But if he was going to be honest, who was he going to be honest with? Honest with Suzu? Even if Alluka hadn't assumed, twisted the truth, or straight out lied to the woman - it still wasn't clear what exactly she'd done - he still found it hard to believe that Gon would have just accepted he was going to this wedding alone. Gon thought his great-grandmother's funeral had been a fine occasion to introduce Killua to Ging. He would expect Killua to extend the same courtesy and introduce Gon to his friends, which wasn't necessarily a terrible assumption. It was something Killua might have even thought of himself. It would be a lie to say that Gon's sudden reappearance in his life hadn't brought up stuff he thought he'd laid to rest long ago. There was a part of him that really needed Gon to see that he'd managed to be just fine without him.

But being honest with Suzu was complicated, even if he had been from the start. She knew that Gon was really important. She suspected Killua's feelings on the matter well before he'd allowed himself to entertain them. Bringing Gon along and suggesting everything was platonic was just a recipe for a serious conversation with her that he would do anything to avoid.

He was lying to her either way.

Being honest with Gon was just as complicated. Sure, Killua had gotten drunk and kissed him, but now that the mortification was fading a little, he could be more realistic.

Gon didn't care that it happened.

Clearly he hadn't wanted things to go any further - he had worn his boots to bed, for fuck's sake - but also he didn't seem to think the situation meant anything. He had essentially said that drunk kissing... or drunk... bites...were just as meaningless as drunk crying, hadn't he? A simple apology for being stupid and angry would probably suffice. If Gon was sincerely bothered by the situation, he would have said.

Gon always said.

But no matter who he was going to come clean to, successful honesty or deception required a single element, the one thing he had been putting off for days.

Being honest with himself.

He was attracted to Gon, there was no point in denying it at this point. He was attracted to him a whole lot, and not just because he was Gon. Killua knew that people thought he was gorgeous, and he tended to agree with them. But if Killua was a fashion model from one of Bisky's horrible magazines, Gon was one of the heroes from the covers of the risqué romance novels that were scattered through her house. Raw, feral, muscled...

There was no point in being _that_ honest with himself. Gon was really hot, that was that.

But he thought _plenty_ of people were attractive and they didn't send him into a goddamn panic.

Suzu, with her long legs, chubby belly, and small breasts was still absolutely beautiful. He could recall in pretty specific detail what she looked like naked, but remembering didn't make him feel like he was going to burst out of his own skin. In fact, knowing she was about to marry someone she loved filled him with something very near to delight.

More recent memories of the week last year with Asher were still fresh in his mind too. Thinking about them a lot brought a flush of red to his cheeks, but they didn't do much else. He wished the guy well, but that was pretty much it, and he suspected the feeling was mutual.

But thinking about Gon was different. It didn't matter if it was this version of Gon, or the strange twelve-year-old who raced him in an underground tunnel, or the utterly destroyed emotional wreck in the back of a truck, or the kid on the cusp of puberty taking a hurting woman out on a date, or the enormous mountain of rage and pain shrinking into a dying child with empty eyes... even hypothetical versions of future Gon counted: as old as Netero and just as annoying, in his late forties teaching his own children how to use Nen, or just a few years from now, winning some kind of incredible battle with nothing but his own damn stubbornness...

It didn't matter what version of Gon he considered, thinking about him made him angry and sad and happy and hopeful and nervous and _relieved_ all at once. Thinking about Gon made him want to be the best version of himself. Thinking about him made him feel like he _could_ be the best version of himself.

Yes, Gon was hot, but so what? It was so much besides the point it might as well be irrelevant. The only thing that mattered when Killua heard his voice next to that waterfall was that he was _there_. He could have looked like a dirtier version of Ging and Killua would not have cared.

Fuck.

This was not ideal.

He'd be honest with Suzu in a few weeks. She'd bellow, and maybe even throw things, but eventually she'd understand. It wasn't like she hadn't lied to him about something pretty significant in her past.

But being honest with Gon was pointless. This morning proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Killua's initial suspicions about Gon's motives for this whole charade were correct. Gon wasn't just romantically uninterested, he was sexually uninterested as well. He'd had his chance, and he had actively avoided it. The brief idea that maybe Gon just didn't want sex from anybody - Suzu didn't - fluttered through his mind, but he pushed it away. It was best not to assume one way or another. Sex or no sex, Gon was too straightforward, too stubborn, to keep his feelings and desires to himself. There had been so many opportunities so far, and he hadn't taken a single one.

Killua had thrown him out because he was embarrassed by his own behavior. That had to stop. He was going to apologize, and he was going to stop worrying about all of this, and he was going to stop being embarrassed. His stupid feelings were making people he cared about sad. It was pathetic. He was stronger than that.

"Sorry, I got distracted by that terrible dress," Alluka looked up at him again. "Anyway, I don't think it's very easy to be honest when you're not sure of stuff. Don't be so hard on yourself, hm?"

Killua ruffled her hair.

"Okay."

 

* * *

 

 

The sunny front room of the busy cafe when he found Dr. Paladiknight, MD convalescing from his own hangover only had a scattering of other customers. Leorio was sitting on an overstuffed chair with a tablet in his hands. He was so intent on whatever it was he was looking at that he didn't notice their presence at all. Granted, Leorio wasn't particularly good at that at the best of times so his missing Alluka, who was getting drinks at the counter, made sense

But Killua was standing directly in front of him.

"Okay, so Gon and I are not really together. It's all fake, but it's also a secret, so you need to keep your damn mouth shut."

Leorio fumbled with the tablet until it fell onto his lap, one of the rounded corners jamming into his thigh. 

"Why in the hell would you do something like that?!?" the force of the words blew the hair off of Killua's forehead. He felt a frisson of delight run up his spine. People who hated being bossed around were the best ones to give orders to.

"I don't feel like talking about it," he shrugged, pulling his hands out of his pockets long enough to slouch into another overstuffed chair. "You should be happy I'm telling you the truth at all, old man."

Leorio wouldn't even look at him, just pulled his phone out and started typing what had to be a text, muttering furiously to himself the whole time. His face went from a dusty rose to hot pink to dark red in the time it took him to hit send.

"So, I guess this means Kurapika knows now too," Killua put his hands over his head. "Oh well, it doesn't matter. He's not here. Where is he anyway? I'd figure you'd bring him along."

There were two small spots on Leorio's nose, probably the only visible remnants of a childhood break, that turned white when he was angry. As he sat his phone on the low table in front of him, they were so bright he could probably use them to see inside someone's ear, or whatever other weird shit doctors had to look into. The no-longer-taller man sucked in a deep breath, no doubt to fuel a really overdramatic lecture, when Alluka swung around the corner, towering hot chocolates in each hand.

"Leorio!" she smiled, prancing the few steps that remained to kiss him on the cheek.

The Leorio that she knew and the Leorio that Killua knew might as well be two different people. To Alluka he was almost mythic in proportions: a heroic, handsome young pediatrician who treated her with nothing but respect. He was a doctor who was so kind and caring with his patients that she wasn't the first person had stopped seeing him so that they could be friends.

To Killua he was a bumbling idiot who had barely passed the Hunter Exam.

And maybe other stuff. He _had_ helped Alluka during a really tough point in her life. Both of their lives, really. And he did seem to care about his friends a lot. Actually he seemed to care about everyone. And he had punched Ging in the face that one time. He'd campaigned as chair of the Hunter Association on a platform of doing nothing other than saving Gon. After losing for some reason he still ranked highly in that political system even though he didn't even have a star.

Not that stars meant that much anyway. Knov had told him that after the Chimera Ant incident Killua and Gon were both eligible. All they had to do was apply. For all he knew, Gon had. But Killua didn't want his sole professional recognition to constantly remind him of the absolute worst day of his life. It didn't even matter: if a fourteen-year-old could get a star for killing some bugs, he could probably get all three in one go at this point.

"I don't know how such a sweetheart can be related to such a liar," Leorio kissed Alluka on the cheek before turning to Killua and resuming his tirade. "What the hell could you possibly get out of pretending to be together? You could have just brought him anyway! As a friend! People do that all the time! Or are you trying to rob the place? Or make someone jealous? Are you _spies?_ Honestly, there's nothing you could _possibly_ tell me that wouldn't sound contrived. How do you even know these people anyway? Are you infiltrating this wedding for a job?!?"

"Suzu is Killua's ex girlfriend," Alluka provided helpfully.

Leorio's eyes looked ready to fall out of their sockets.

"You _are_ trying to make her jealous!" he steamed. "Where do you _get off_ using Gon like that, after everything he went through to find you?"

Killua was about to say that he had no fucking clue what that was, since Gon had been so tight-lipped about it, but Alluka spoke up first.

"Leorio, how do you know Suzu?" she asked. "Killua went to school with her, so that's how they met."

"I don't," he said calmly. "I know Ila, he's a drinking buddy." Turning back to Killua, the lecture continued. "Shouldn't you be with your _boyfriend_ right now?"

"Nii-chan is embarrassed," Alluka chirped. "He got too drunk, and he doesn't remember very much."

"Did you talk about jerking off on national television?" Leorio lifted an eyebrow. "Go big or go home, that's what I always say. And I didn't even think you _could_ get drunk..."

Alluka giggled.

"Gon said you were pissed last night. Alluka wanted to see you, and I came along to make things right. Last time I'll make that mistake." Killua stood, hands back in his pockets. He made his way across the room to leave.

"Killua," Leorio called out just as he reached the entryway.

He turned his head.

"I won't tell anyone, but when everything goes to hell don't come crying to me."

It was a little too late for that.

 

* * *

 

Wedding rehearsals were unbearably boring. He don't know why he'd expected otherwise, since weddings were probably boring too. He wasn't a member of the wedding party so not actually involved in any of the formality. All he had to do was walk to the front of the garden at a certain time, read something, and then sit. He didn't know why Suzu had asked him to do this at all - he leaned towards the monotone when reading out loud and she had plenty of other more dramatic friends. But it wasn't like he could easily say no. It was kind of an honor, even if he was pretty nervous about doing it. He thought the rehearsal would at least give him a chance to see just how rotten he sounded, but as soon as he pulled out the crumpled piece of paper to read, the officiant was waving him off.

With nothing else to do, he pulled out his sketchbook and went back to sketching his present for the wedding. The draft was almost done, and then he had to draw a final copy. He really had no idea if this was an acceptable wedding gift at all, but it wasn't like he could call his mother and ask. He'd thought briefly about calling Bisky; she had been around long enough to understand how wedding presents worked, but when he tried and she didn't answer, he felt too stupid to leave a message or call back.

If she didn't like it he'd just buy them something else, like a pile of rare wood or some kind of expensive cured ham... damn it what kind of presents were you supposed to buy as an adult?

He didn't realize the mind-numbing boredom was finished until one familiar and two memorable sloppy auras, the kind that all regular people were spilling out all over the place all the time, started to approach him. Based on the way they were moving, Suzu was frog marching the girls from last night over to him, probably to apologize.

"I know you know we're standing here, Killua," she said to his back.

He closed his sketchbook and spun himself around, legs splayed out and elbows resting on his knees. The grass was quite possibly staining his pants, but he didn't really care at the moment. For effect, he pulled his knife out of his boot and started twirling it across his fingers. The knife was for eating with, but they didn't know that.

"Yo," he lifted his head, but not high enough for them to see his eyes. A small smirk danced across his lips. He was going to enjoy this.

The smaller redhead, whom he was associating with the color pink for some reason, spoke up first.

"Killua, we're really sorry."

Her shadow stumbled forward as Suzu pushed her, and the other woman added, "We shouldn't have pushed you to drink so much."

"Yeah!" the redhead sounded even more nervous. "Rosalie and I didn't realize that it would upset Gon so much."

He lifted his head. An apology he expected. This, not so much.

"He was upset?"

The darker one, Rosalie, turned to the redhead, "You explain Hana. You saw more of it than I did."

"He wasn't mad or anything! Well, I don't actually know, because I don't know him, but after you guys made out for awhile he seemed really nervous. He kept saying that you weren't acting like yourself."

"He definitely wasn't happy about it," Rosalie added. "We just wanted you to relax some - you seemed really unhappy at the party. Sorry, we hope we didn't cause any kind of problems. Also, how are you uh... feeling?"

"It's cool," he shrugged. "I'm fine."

The simple, earnest apology he had planned to give Gon no longer seemed sufficient, of course. He had to find out what exactly had upset him, and his earlier resolution to just calmly roll with the situation had evaporated, but yeah, he was fine.

"Okay great, you've apologized," Suzu pushed between them. "Now if you don't mind, I'm going to talk about you while you go stand over there."

Rosalie and Hana, because those were, in fact, their names, rushed off looking stressed but relieved. Suzu plopped down on the ground next to him, despite the fact that she was wearing a dress. She wore one so rarely he wasn't surprised that she didn't really seem to know how to sit in it.

"This is my fault," she grunted.

Killua flipped the knife back into his boot. "You told them to keep me happy, didn't you?"

"I thought maybe now that your sister was settled and Gon was back you might be more open to making friends. They're cool girls, and I think you'd like them. You sure seemed to last night."

That seemed true enough for the parts he could remember.

"Just because I don't have a ton of friends doesn't mean I'm lonely, you know."

"Yeah, yeah I know all about Killua's Friend Code, and why you've never once said thank you to me. You are such a weirdo, I just thought you'd want to be friends with them. They took everything a little bit too seriously is all. Is Gon okay?"

"We had a.... thing this morning, but it'll be fine. I just needed to cool off."

She lifted her eyebrow, "Are you lying to me?"

He grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze before he stood up.

"Nope."

 

* * *

  

Gon was already sitting down at the table when they arrived at the restaurant, but he stood as soon as they came in. His hair was slicked back as well as could be managed (which was not very well) and he was wearing bright green suspenders with his brown trousers. There was no time to do or say anything apologetic - the meal began almost immediately and they were sitting in the very middle of the long table.

They both jumped into small talk with the person sitting next to them. In Killua's case it was one of Suzu's contractor friends, a person named Mel who designed solar panels for a living. As it turned out, Mel had been involved in the design of the skylight in his hotel room, and explained how the thing worked. Apparently all you had to do was turn a switch and they wouldn't be woken up with the sun shining directly in their eyes.

"We actually designed it so lovers could look at the stars. It's on a timer so if you set it the tiles will darken in the morning. Didn't the concierge tell you?"

Killua shrugged, "I wasn't paying attention."

Next to him Gon was having an animated conversation with Menchi about some restaurant they had both been to. Under the table, his legs continually grazed against Killua's, because their chairs were pushed uncomfortably close together. He had noticed that all the other couples at the tables were sitting close together, including Rosalie and Hana, because of _course_ they were desperately in love and he had completely missed it. It seemed unwise not to mimic, so he had slid himself closer and put his arm behind Gon for good measure, even though now the Enhancer's telescoping gestures kept whacking him in the face.

If Killua were anyone else, he'd have been knocked unconscious.

  

The speeches from Ila's father and Suzu's mother were finished, and a pretty large portion of the guests were well and truly drunk. Ila was in the open kitchen, preparing small dishes for whoever asked. As it turned out, he was one of the few chefs who Menchi actually enjoyed. She wouldn't let anyone else order anything, despite Buhara's gentle protests. Rosalie and Hana were cuddling on a the couch near the hostess station, while Suzu had moved several tables to clear open space and was building some kind of architectural structure out of chairs.

His phone buzzed with a text from Alluka. She was still rollerskating with Leorio and Knuckle. Thus far there were no casualties. He wasn't too worried even if there were - Leorio could treat anyone that Knuckle injured.

Gon had disappeared, but Killua could sense him in the garden that served as an outside seating area. He wasn't using Zetsu. It was like he wanted to be found.

The night was crisp and a little chilly, but when he found Gon sitting on a bench, the sleeves of his white shirt were still rolled up to his biceps. He was practicing his Emission, making tiny balls of Nen that chased each other through the hanging vines and trees. They were glowing like enormous fireflies in the dark.

"I'm sorry for this morning," Killua coughed. "I was really uh... embarrassed."

"That's okay, Killua," Gon looked up at him, the sparkling lights from his tiny missiles reflected in his dark eyes. "Do you wanna sit?"

He flopped down next to him on the bench. "I'll buy you new pants. And a belt. You clearly need a belt." The suspenders didn't look bad. They looked ridiculous, actually, but also incredibly good. It was a battle of aesthetics versus attraction, and Killua had no idea who would win. 

Gon grabbed the suspenders and snapped them. "I don't know, I really sort of like these."

"I haven't seen you wear that shade of green in a long time."

"It's my favorite. Mito-san used to make all my clothes, and she always made them green. She even had them order special fabric at the store. It reminded me of Whale Island when I was away. But then I got too big, and they don't usually make clothes this color for adults."

"That's stupid. I can find purple clothes wherever. I bet Mito-san would make you more."

"Yeah, but I feel bad asking," Gon sent more Nen fireflies chasing after each other. "She's already done so much... do you know how young she was when Ging left?"

"Yeah, she told me. But I wouldn't worry, I think she likes doing things for you. I think that's what parents are for." Most parents. Not his, obviously, but most. 

Gon didn't respond, just watched his Nen as it danced through the garden. Inside the restaurant, someone had turned on some music, and the noise of laughter filtered out through the cracked windows. Killua lifted his arms behind his head and leaned back. He was trying to mentally unpack just how exactly he was going to make things okay with Gon, when Gon spoke up.

"So um... Killua, was it bad?"

Killua dropped his arms and turned to face him. Because nothing had been bad that he could remember. Maybe something else had happened. 

"What are you talking about?" He really had no idea. The dinner? The Nen practice? Something that no one else had seen? 

"Kissing me."

"I don't think so," Killua said before he could stop himself, "but I don't remember very much."

Internally he was screaming.

"Oh," Gon was thoughtful. "Hey, so, can I kiss you right now?"

Any pretense of calm fell away. Gon wasn't _interested_ in this with him, so why was he asking? No one was paying attention, they didn't have to put on a show and even if they did, sitting alone in a garden surrounded by twinkling lights was more than enough romance to convince even the most seasoned skeptic.

"W-what?"

Gon turned, eyes glowing, and Killua cursed every single bit of Nen floating around the garden.

"I want to find out if I can actually do it."

Of course, it was all just part of this ridiculous game. Of course. Gon wanted to win at _kissing_ apparently, and that meant that his partner had to be more or less coherent for the experience to count.

"I already said it wasn't bad!" he threw up his arms to hide his embarrassment.

"Well, yeah, but you said you didn't remember!"

He wasn't going to let his feelings hurt people anymore. Gon's first kiss had been completely fake. He had taken that from him, even if Gon didn't care, and Killua hadn't known. If Gon was going to ask to kiss him, he was going to let him do it at least once. 

"Okay, if you want," he shrugged.

Gon looked at him, wide-eyed, like he had just offered him the net profits from Greed Island. 

"Well, just do it, if you want to do it _._ I've got things to do, Alluka wants to meet up pretty soon."

Gon hummed and nodded, "Okay, so what should I do, then?"

"I don't know! It's your kiss, I don't even know why you're doing thi-"

Hands on his shoulders and warm lips pressing against his cut him off. His eyes fluttered closed out of habit, but not before he saw dark eyelashes and freckles and bronzy skin. Gon was kissing him and there was no one around to see. Gon was kissing him and he'd never _really_ kissed anyone before.

He might as well make it worth his while.

Killua kissed him back.

He tasted the same, earthy and sweet like whisky, not sugar. Broad hands on his shoulders slid up to grasp the junction of his neck and jaw, pulling him closer. Gon was too aggressive, of course, urging his lips to move and knocking their teeth together with the finesse of someone who had no idea what he was doing, but was trying everything all at once so he could learn.

Killua kissed him back.

Gon's fingers caressed the buzzed hair on the back of his neck, pushed his lips forward and pulled his teeth back, giving teasing little kisses over and over, as though he were testing every inch of his lips for some kind of vulnerability.

Killua kissed him back.

 _This is not real_ , he told himself, as Gon's tongue traced his lips.

 _This is too much,_ he told himself, when his own lips drifted apart to let him in.

And then, nothing. Gon's hands fell away, and Killua took the opportunity to pull back. 

With no direction, the Nen fireflies were surrounding Gon in a halo of light, making him almost impossible to look at.

So he didn't.

"Pretty good," he shrugged, heart in his throat. "Less teeth though. And unless you've just confessed your undying love to someone, it's probably okay to go slower than that. Don't wanna overwhelm the guy."

Gon hummed his understanding and the light from the fireflies was absorbed into his aura. The air felt heavier than normal, as though they'd be crushed if they didn't leave the garden immediately. Killua pulled out his phone that had buzzed a dozen times in the past two minutes. 

"Alluka, Knuckle, and Leorio are all going to get ice cream. I'm gonna meet up with them if you want to-"

"I do," Gon coughed out, voice husky.

 

Knuckle ate three banana splits, and gave a fourth to the strays in the alley, despite Leorio's protests that milk was bad for cats. Alluka had a sundae, and got whipped cream on her nose with every other bite. Gon and Killua each had ice cream cones as big as their heads, and Leorio, after agonizing over his choices for nearly five minutes, had a milkshake.

The night ended with all five of them in Gon and Killua's suite, watching terrible brides try on awful wedding dresses.

When the morning of the wedding shone in. bright and unavoidable from the skylight, there were four of them on the bed. Leorio was teetering on the very edge of the mattress next to Gon, whose face was the first thing Killua saw, millimeters away from his own when he opened his eyes. On his other side was Alluka, who was taking up enough space for three people as usual.

He found Knuckle sleeping in the bathtub with a noisy kitten when he went to take a piss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is SO late. I had kind of a really rough day, and editing this chapter was done not necessarily as thoroughly as I might like. Write drunk, edit sober is a good method, but not one I was able to follow in this instance. I've gone back through and fixed a few glaring mistakes, but there might be more.
> 
> Also I am sorry this is just a trope orgy, but KISSING PRACTICE. Which, by the way, the wonderful penn-dragon has [illustrated](http://purple-penntapus.tumblr.com/post/145711495293/so-i-always-loved-this-drawing-but-the-way-i-drew) !!!!!


	8. I don't even know if I wanna believe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so... as mentioned earlier, there will at some point be smut in this story. Since some folks don't want to read that, which I totally get, and some folks don't like their stories spoiled, here is a compromise! At some point in the next three chapters, shit is gonna go down. When you see a series of Xs, instead of the normal space or line separating segments, you know that things are gonna get sexy, so if you don't want that, feel free to skip! Whether that's gonna happen in this chapter, or another... well, you'll see.

"Do you not sleep like a normal person?!?" Killua shrieked, fumbling with his dick. It was out because that was what a person did when he was about to piss. That meant it was also at eye level of the man who was unexpectedly in the tub.

"Ayayayyy sorry! Calm down, willya?" Knuckle sat up from his nest of cushions, scowling, but also gently petting a tiny calico kitten. "I was on the couch, but then Patches here started gettin noisy! I didn't want to wake you fools. Or see _that_ , eeeeesh."

"But... argh!... why sleep in Zetsu?" Killua was more interested as to why he would do so in someone's only bathroom, but he was too occupied with awkwardly shoving himself back in his shorts to really focus on his phrasing.

Knuckle raised his eyebrow, "You _don't_?"

Of course he fucking did. Although... he hadn't really in years. Sleeping without Zetsu meant that his aura was powerful enough to distract anyone from noticing Nanika. Granted, he still couldn't sense much of anything, even when she was there, but Nanika's power had been demonstrably limitless so far. There was always the chance that someone else might find her. Someone unexpected and strong, a weird loner like Gon's dad, maybe. Or someone more nefarious, like Chrollo Lucilfer, maybe. He could steal abilities away - would he be able to steal Nanika somehow? She was a _person_ , not a form of Hatsu, _obviously_ , but she was so different than any other person in existence that Killua just didn't know.

The thought of Nanika forcibly separated from Alluka was worse than Illumi taking them both back to Kukuroo Mountain.

But he wasn't about to explain all that, especially since it had all been a shot in the dark anyway, one risk over another even greater one. On top of that, he had promised Nanika and Alluka both that he was going to ease back on being so protective, especially in public. So he kept it to himself, trying to pick up the shards of his dignity. The fact that his hair was sticking up on one side and his morning wood was taking forever to go away didn't help. So he just fumed. Knuckle could think he was incompetent if he wanted, though he should know better.

"Killua, are you okay?" Gon's whisper on the other side of the door was loud enough to wake the dead, but not quite enough to dismantle the tent in his shorts.

"Yeah, yeah, Knuckle's just in here with that kitten like an idiot."

"He brought it home?" the whisper was even louder when he was excited.

Killua rolled his eyes and adjusted himself, hoping that Gon wouldn't notice. If he was never going to get to use the bathroom in peace, it would be nice for his hard-on to go away at least.

"Just come in already!"

The door flew open to reveal Gon's hair, spikes angled wildly from the pillow, and then the rest of him, the skin on his cheeks still wrinkled from sleeping on his face. Killua expected him to rush for the kitten, which he did, but not before pausing to quickly kiss him on the cheek.

"G'morning," he said with a little smile. "Your hair looks silly."

Killua's heart lost its sense of gravity, rising and sinking all at the same time. The softness in Gon's voice, the look in his eyes...

Insisting this was all fake was becoming more and more difficult, opening up a level of complication to the situation that was a million times worse.

The room was full of sunlight from a skylight over the tub, and Gon's skin shone golden as he sat on the edge to coo over the tiny ball of fluff.

"What are you gonna do with her during the wedding?" he chuckled as tiny paws batted at a drooping spike of hair.

The Beast Hunter coughed, "Oh, you know, keep her in my room and put up the 'Do Not Disturb' sign. Course I'll be stuck paying for any damages, and there's bound to be some. She's got some real energy, this one."

There wasn't a doubt in Killua's mind that Knuckle was going to bring that damn cat to the wedding.

"Anyway," the older man stood, cracking his back. A cushion from the couch was stuck to his ass. "I should get back to my own room and rest a bit. Didn't mean to fall asleep like that. I haven't roller skated since I was a kid; it wore me out. Especially with your sister. She's an old pro."

Killua tried to put his hands in his pockets, but of course, his shorts didn't have any. "Yeah, she's pretty good. Can I pee now?"

Gon handed back the kitten, eyes alight with a new idea, "Killua, we should all go again tomorrow! I've never been roller skating before!"

The thought of Gon on wheels in a room full of innocent bystanders was somewhat unnerving, although he supposed they... could...

 _Tomorrow_ , when the wedding would be over.

Somewhere in the background, Gon and Knuckle were still talking, but he didn't hear them. Because they hadn't discussed tomorrow.

At all.

Were they going to leave separately? Together? Killua needed to take a job fairly soon - would Gon go with him? That would mean being seen with someone who hadn't spent countless years trying to disappear. The one person everyone expected him to be with. His family would find them for certain. Was it finally time to stop hiding from them? He'd already been so careless these past few weeks. What would his behavior mean for Alluka and Nanika? The school was impenetrable, he'd made sure of that. He and Bisky both had tried to break in multiple times. Knov had set up escapes on every corridor. And most importantly, Alluka _wanted_ more independence, regardless of the risk. And he couldn't tell her no anymore. But his mental health was bound to suffer. Did he need to just bite the bullet, call the manor, and find out if Illumi was actually gone? Gotoh would tell him if he picked up the phone.

Knuckle and Gon were, thankfully, leaving the bathroom, chatting about the genetic abnormality of calico cats. They paused at the door, and Gon asked if he was coming.

"Maybe once I finally get a chance to piss?"

Alone with his bodily functions, Killua's mind cranked into overdrive.

Everything had happened so fast - Gon finding them, moving Alluka to school, the funeral, the wedding, everything - that he hadn't made any plans for what would happen afterwards. Gon hadn't said a thing about what he wanted or needed to do. Clearly he didn't need money - he'd told Mito as much. It made sense; Gon had always been more self-disciplined with his spending anyway. But did he have other plans? Did he expect them to just start traveling together again?

Things had gotten so complicated...

They had to talk about all this.

The practical aspects, obviously, he assured himself, picking up his toothbrush after relieving more urgent concerns. Because this _was_ going to end, and Gon was _definitely_ going to stop... whatever it was they were doing. Then, whether it was in his company, or traveling alone, Killua could deal with his emotions in peace.

 _I'm in love with my best friend_.

There. That was it. There was no point in denying it - denial just made everything foggier. It wasn't like it was _news,_ anyway. A part of him probably had been since they were twelve. Suzu had certainly been hinting at it for the past two years. It didn't matter how long he'd felt this way though: it was fucked up now. Once again, he and Gon's emotions and intentions were uneven, and just like before, it had the capacity to ruin everything.

For good.

Killua knew he would eventually get over it. He'd gotten over it before. He just needed time, and more than that, space. The problem was, trying to tell Gon that in a way he understood. He wasn't going to want to hear anything that involved them putting distance between them, emotional or otherwise. He probably didn't even understand what Killua was feeling.

It wouldn't be the first time that had happened.

But...

Was that what _really_ had happened back then?

For two years, Gon had told him over and over how important and special he was. How happy he was to have met him. 

How often had he responded with anything other than embarrassment?

He held up his hands, remembering what it felt like to have every single bone broken all at once. Not the precision breaks from his mother - specially designed injuries that had been given time to heal, and actually made his hands even stronger than before. Not those. He remembered the feeling of his bones shattering beyond repair as his best friend, the most important person in his world, destroyed his hands to win a _game_.

Killua had been happy about it. Happy to be useful, and then _thrilled_ when Gon told Tzegerra why it couldn't be anyone else holding that ball. But he hadn't told Gon then what he felt. He'd just done it.

It wasn't like he _actually_ knew what Gon was like in a romantic context. He just assumed. But what if he was wrong? It was important to consider all possibilities, no matter how unlikely. What if, just for the sake of argument, Gon really was developing feelings for him beyond those necessary to complete their mission or win this stupid game or whatever it was about this situation that appealed so much to his competitive nature...

Did that change anything?

Would a Gon who came to... _love_ him beyond the wanton affection he showed to pretty much every living creature he met be less reckless? More thoughtful? Or would it make things even worse? Would a Gon who loved him still devour entire universes to get what he wanted? All of that intensity focused on a solitary target. All from the single person Killua was still not certain he could say no to. Had Killua developed the ability to speak up? To know when he was giving too much? He'd already nearly lost his hands... would there be anything _left_ of him, if Gon loved him?

Who even _was_ Gon Freecss anymore? He was the same, but _so different._ There was too much Killua didn't know to make an accurate assessment. The truth was, he hadn't known enough this entire time. He'd just assumed.

But now...

He looked at his reflection in the mirror, wide blue eyes staring back in stark realization.

These lies upon lies, this web of treachery, his complete inability to be honest with himself, his sister, and his two best friends, it all hinged on something that went beyond unrequited affection. Nothing would be playing out this way otherwise. He wasn't that weak.

Because he _was_ afraid that Gon didn't love him back, of course. Anyone would be.

But the idea that Gon _might actually love him_ was absolutely terrifying.

 

When he finally left the bathroom, Knuckle was gone.

Kurapika, however, was there.

"Things are fine," the delicate featured man yawned on the screen of Leorio's tablet. "Nothing interesting to report."

Things did not look fine. Even across the room Killua could see the dark bags under his eyes, his rumpled shirt, and hair that was stringy and unwashed. And Leorio's worry was a dark cloud that reached out to the far corners of the room.

"What are you all doing this morning?" Kurapika continued in a voice sticky with exhaustion. "Leorio, I didn't expect you would have company... is this even your room? It looks enormous..."

"Oh no, it's our room, Kurapika!"

"Did you all have a sleepover, Gon?" Kurapika lifted his eyebrow curiously. "It looks like you have a visitor too?" His voice stopped, and despite the terrible lighting, Killua could see the faintest flash of red under dark contact lenses. "Of course that has to be... of course! I knew you were all together but I just, it's been so long... _Killua_ it's wonderful to see you! You're so tall now!"

"Yeah, uh... you too. Nice to see you, I mean," Killua said, rubbing his hands against his upper thighs. It had seemed fine to sleep in his underwear last night, but now he was just standing there talking to Kurapika after nearly six years, in his shorts. "Sorry, it's been awhile, you know, I couldn't really..."

"There's no need to explain, I understand. But that must mean that this," his eyes shifted, "is Alluka? It's delightful to meet you..." he called her something in a language Killua had never heard before. It didn't sound remotely like anything he could say - he didn't think he'd be physically capable of pronouncing it if he tried.

It had to be Kurta.

Either Kurapika was so tired he was slipping into the language he had grown up speaking, or he had just shown his sister a side of himself he kept hidden from nearly everyone. It was potentially both.

He must have seen the look on their faces, because he immediately blushed.

"Oh, sorry, it means, erm... moonlight? Well, literally it's defined as... or, rather, it comes from the root meaning of this term for..." he sighed deeply. "Suffice it to say that it's hard to explain. I'm sorry, I suppose I'm a bit more tired than I realized, but I've heard a lot about you, Alluka. Apparently enough to sing your praises in untranslatable terminology."

She grinned as Killua slid into the open chair next to her, "My brother pretends you bother him whenever he talks about you, so I think he likes you quite a bit."

Kurapika broke into a wide, authentic smile while Killua scowled.

Under the table, Alluka tapped his knuckles three times with her pointer finger, their practiced gesture to ask if it was safe for Nanika to come out.

She knew it wasn't.

Even though Kurapika himself was trustworthy, video chats were incredibly easy to hack and record. Alluka was lucky _she_ was getting to meet him. If Killua hadn't been in the bathroom when the call was made, he wasn't certain if he would have allowed it. Milluki knew who Leorio was and...

But Illumi was gone, maybe, so what did it matter? It wasn't like Milluki could do much of anything. Besides Illumi, no one _seemed_ to care about Nanika, outside of self-preservation. Regardless, there could be other people watching. Seeing a girl suddenly form black pits where her eyes had been was bound to draw unwanted attention.

Though he didn't want to, Killua shook his head sadly.

Kurapika's smile turned gentler, "Alluka, could you please pass on a message to our friend who couldn't be here? Tell her I hope that I get to meet her someday soon."

Alluka nodded. Whoever had told Kurapika about Nanika (it was probably Leorio, honestly), Killua was for once grateful rather than furious.

"Where are you, Kurapika?" Gon asked. "Is it nice?"

"Oh, it's quite dull, actually," Kurapika dodged the question but looked more exhausted than ever in the process.

Leorio muttered something that might have been " _Like hell it is_ ," under his breath.

"But speaking of things that might be interesting, please, tell me what you have all been doing these past few days." Kurapika's weary face settled into a smirk, "Leorio seems to find it quite... scandalous."

 

* * *

 

"Thanks, Killua!" Nanika smiled wide into the mirror as Killua drug his fingers through a cloud of lavender ruffles, zipping up the awkward side zipper of her dress. "Was hard."

Nanika couldn't go to the wedding - she could hardly ever go to anything, really - but she was happy all the same just to dress up. She had been chattering blissfully for the last fifteen minutes, despite how it drained her.  

"You're welcome," his voice cracked embarrassingly.

"Killua is handsome," she reached up to pat him on the head. He'd felt stupid, wearing the same suit to a funeral and a wedding all in the matter of a week, enough so to forgo the vest and buy a black shirt to change up the look. It seemed like a ridiculous concern now, the way Nanika was smiling at him. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, the light heather grey of his jacket contrasting against the high, dark purple neck of her dress.

"And Nanika is beautiful. Do you want me to finish your makeup?"

"Please!" Nanika wiggled free and ran over to her bag, pulling out a brush and some blusher. Nanika lacked contours and outlines to her eyes and lips. There was nowhere to put makeup, really, so Alluka only ever wore a faint dusting of pink on her cheeks. She could do it herself, of course, and Nanika was getting pretty good at it too, but Killua had been helping them for years, and it was something he didn't really want to stop.

"Did you do your hair by yourself?" he asked, lightly touching the high ponytail that was wrapped at the base with a thick strand of her own hair.

"Yes!" Nanika nodded so excitedly that he couldn't get anywhere near her face. "Bisky showed me!"

"She sure does love playing around with the stuff," he mused, holding her by the chin and gently brushing the places where the apples of Alluka's cheeks would emerge. "Do you have earrings?" he asked when he was done.

She jumped out of the chair and skipped back over to her suitcase, pulling out a small bag decorated with masks and ripping open the zipper. After digging around in it for awhile, Nanika's face fell, and a fat tear wobbled at the corner of her eye.

"We forgot."

A knock on the door stopped her from bursting into tears.

"Can I come in?" Gon asked. "I um... brought something for you girls."

"Just a second," Killua called back, kneeling down. He had no idea what Gon had brought. Knowing him it could be anything from a flower to a baby foxbear, but it was a distraction, and it would keep Nanika from getting worked up. "Gon has something for you, Nanika. Are you sure you want to be all upset when he gives it to you?"

She sniffed and shook her head.

He nodded, "Should we let him in?"

"Kay."

He stood and then helped her up. It was strange how much she had filled out in the past month. Or maybe it had been longer than that, it had been at least a year since the treatments started. But this was the first dress, or really anything he'd seen her wear that was fitted instead of flowing. Of course she was always going to be fucking lovely, but he knew how much the change meant, and his heart caught in his throat just thinking about it.

He was going to open the door, but she beat him to it, yanking it open so quickly that Gon, jumped in surprise.

"Wow, Nanika, you look gorgeous!" he marveled in his authentic, easy way.

The pink on her cheeks grew darker.

The shopkeeper who'd insisted that he'd find something acceptable for Gon to wear had not been lying, although he still hadn't managed to alter a jacket to fit. Instead Gon was wearing a crisp, biscuit-colored shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows. Killua had yet to see Gon wear cuffs they way they were intended. On top was a tweed vest that accented the broad spread of his shoulders and the trimness of his waist. Hanging around the collar of the shirt was an untied, dark green bow tie. The tailor had also managed to alter a pair of brown pants to be snug and flattering without being ridiculously loose in the waist or obscenely tight in the thigh. And, of course, Gon was still wearing his boots.

He looked gorgeous too.

"Oh, here," he handed Nanika a small velvet box with a tiny star on the lid. "I bought these awhile ago, but I never really had a chance to give them to you."

She flicked the box open and gasped, but Killua couldn't see what she was looking at.

"So pretty!" she crooned.

"I, um, hope you can wear them," Gon stammered, and the tips of his ears were red. "I bought them a few years ago. I kinda thought all girls had pierced ears for awhile. Anyway, they're opals. I thought the blue ones looked like," his eyes flickered up to Killua's then back down at Nanika, "Alluka's eyes. And the black ones look like yours."

Nanika's hands moved clumsily to her ear, a dangly earring pinched between her fingers. With slow, deliberate movements, she pushed the hook through the hole. Twin stones hung from delicate filigree cages, flashing with pale blue and deep black shattered fire.

"Gon is nice," she said softly.

Gon chuckled, "Nanika, you saved my life! I probably should have bought you more than just some earrings."

She pulled him into a hug, and Gon lifted her up, spinning her around. She squealed with glee, swinging feet just barely missing the generic art print and mirror hanging on the walls of the small hotel room she'd insisted on having to herself.

"Your dress was made for spinning," Gon laughed when he sat her down. The ruffles made one last rotation around both of their legs before bouncing back into a bell and falling to the floor. Nanika looked up at him with adoring eyes, It was a look that had been until that moment reserved for only Bisky and Killua himself.

"Gon is very nice."

Killua was _so_. _fucked._

* * *

 

 

They were holding the wedding in a small corner of the city's biggest park, a sprawling collection of open gardens and secluded glades that had once been a series of broad parade grounds and dense woods set aside for combat exercises. When the military state had been overthrown the new government, in an act of benevolence that not everyone had agreed with, gave the land back as open public space.

Killua had been to a total of zero weddings before, but this one had seemed pretty intimate. When he had sat down between Gon and Alluka in one of the rows comprised of a random assortment of wooden chairs, there hadn't been _that_ many places to sit. Knowing Suzu, she'd probably scoured every junk shop in a hundred mile radius for the chairs, and once the wedding was over, she'd turn them into something she could sell for a profit.

But the small group of people in the secluded corner garden seemed enormous when he was standing in front of all of them to read. His nerves felt completely ridiculous, because if he was willing to admit a less than great thing about himself it was that he loved to show off.

Well, he loved to show off things he was good at. Dramatic readings had not been part of the assassin curriculum. Playing characters had been Illumi's thing, not his.

"I'll be reading excerpts from the letters of the painter, Van Rint," he said, looking mostly from Suzu, who was resplendent in her fitted white dress and tall hair, to Alluka, a bright purple vision in a seat near the front. He glanced at Knuckle, who was already crying buckets directly onto the kitten who was poking out of the collar of his shirt. He tried to avoid looking Gon at all costs.

"Any of you who know Suzu probably aren't surprised that she wanted a tragic painter's words in her wedding, but in case you didn't, uh, well, you should probably just ask. She'll never stop talking about it."

The audience, especially people who knew the bride well, laughed. Feeling a little more at ease, Killua cleared his throat and began to read.

" **From the beginning of this love I’ve felt that unless I threw myself into it unreservedly, committing myself to it whole-heartedly, fully and forever, there would be absolutely no chance for me. And if I’ve thrown myself into it in the above-mentioned way, that doesn’t alter the fact that the chance is very small. But does it matter to me if the chance is larger or smaller? I mean, must I, can I, take that into account when I love? No — no thought to the winnings — one loves because one loves.** ”

He had gone over the passage dozens of times, but as he read the words out loud, they suddenly made horrible sense. What kind of bullshit was this to read at a wedding? When you really thought about it, it was _terrible._ Damned if you do, damned if you don't. That was insane.

He refused to look at Gon.

" **I also believe that those who hold that no one thinks clearly when in love are wrong, for it is at just that time that one thinks very clearly indeed and is more energetic than one was before.** _"_

He took a breath. No wonder this guy had suffered so much. What he said was contradictory. It didn't make sense, unless he'd been in some kind of personal hell. Was that what love was? 

Killua was definitely not going to look at Gon.

 _"_ **Love is something eternal, it may change in aspect but not in essence. And there is the same difference between someone who is in love and what that person was like before as there is between a lamp that is lit and one that is not. The lamp was there all the time and it was a good lamp, but now it is giving light as well and that is its true function** _._ "

His mouth felt dry. He wouldn't look at Gon, but Gon's words were echoing through his mind all the same, mingling with the reading until he had to hold on to the podium to stay upright.

" _It felt like I couldn’t really be myself without you. It was really lonely. Do you know what I mean?"_

" **That doesn't alter the fact that the chance is very small..."**

He was a fucking trained assassin. A professional Hunter who'd beat out everyone in his class in the first phase of the exam. He'd defeated seasoned adults in Heaven's Arena twice, outwitted the Genei Ryodan, cleared Greed Island before anyone else, and survived a war with giant murder bugs. He'd _stolen_ the Zoldyck family's two most prized possessions: his sister, and himself. He'd kept them safe. He'd given Alluka the life she wanted. He'd graduated school on time even though he started half the subjects ten years behind everyone else.

He'd kept Gon Freecss alive.

And he hadn't killed anyone in five years. 

He took a deep breath and looked at Gon.

He was Killua fucking Zoldyck and he was going to handle this.

  

"They're pretty good at that, eh?" Leorio dropped a beer in front of him, and slid into a nearby chair.

Alluka and Gon were dominating the dance floor. A large portion of the wedding guests were gathered around the open space just to watch. Gon only really seemed to know the dances from Whale Island, but Alluka was so talented and he was such a fast learner that they'd managed to cobble something together that turned out to be pretty phenomenal.

"Yeah, she was a little clumsy after the growth spurt, but she seems to be doing a lot better now." Killua grabbed the neck of the bottle and brought it to his lips so Leorio wouldn't see the way he was smiling. "She'd better be, for all the money I pay for her school." The beer tasted sour and sharp and even though it wasn't going to do anything, he liked the taste enough to keep drinking.

"That's true," Leorio admitted. "Can't say I know many other brothers who'd do quite so much."

Killua sat the bottle on the table. "Are you complimenting me, old man?"

Leorio scowled. "Nope."

They sat, wordlessly watching Gon twirl Alluka to the awed gasps and generous applause. His bowtie had come undone again, and it whipped through the air when he spun her around.

"Did you pick out that reading? The 'no hope for me,' thing?" Leorio broke the silence.

"Nah, I didn't," he took another drink. "Suzu did. It took me awhile to even figure out what the hell the guy was talking about and when I did it was kinda..."

"Disturbing?"

"Yeah, actually."

"You're telling me," Leorio propped his elbows up on his knees. "I didn't really expect something quite so honest at a wedding. Kind of respectable. The bride's like that, then?"

"Well, she does a lot of things that make people uncomfortable, but what do you mean, honest?"

Leorio chuckled then threw back his beer. "Love is fucked up. It feels like you lose all control over yourself and your destiny half the time. Or maybe that's just if you manage to fall for a... well..." whatever he was going to say turned into an awkward cough.

_Self-destructive idiot?_

"It's work, pretty much constantly," the man continued, "but it's kind of like, what other choice do you have? I appreciate the candor, that's all."

Killua didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything.

"You can't even judge risk properly. What's dangerous and what's not..." Leorio continued. The subject of his conversation had clearly shifted. He was trying to be subtle, but Killua could feel him looking at him out of the corner of his eyes.

"Just say what you want to say, gramps."

Leorio snorted, "What I want to say is I don't know what the hell to tell you, you little shit. Just that I know how you feel. And don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about."

Neither of them said anything for a long time after that.

"Is it worth it?" he asked quietly, watching Alluka laugh as Gon dipped her, bringing their dance to a dramatic close.

Leorio barked out a single laugh. "Do you think I know what the hell I'm doing? I thought I was straight for twenty years. I'm still mostly straight, I mean look at this suit."  

Killua chuckled into his beer.

"If you're asking if I'd take any of it back, the answer's no. But that was my decision," he took a long drink. "And this, whatever's going on, and whoever you're worried about it hurting, it's still your decision. Not hers. Not his. So do everyone a favor and make it for yourself."

"Oniiiiiii-chaannn," Alluka called out, waving her arms like he was four miles away. "Come out and dance with me!"

"Duty calls," Leorio lifted up his legs and sat them on the table as Killua stood. "If you two disappear, I'll make sure she gets back to the hotel safe tonight."

Killua nodded. He made it five steps away, then called over his shoulder, "Hey, so, old man..."

Leorio lifted his eyebrow in annoyance.

"If you ever, you know, need to talk about reckless dumbasses, I won't hang up on you."

He danced with Alluka first.

If she and Gon had drawn attention to themselves through sheer physicality and talent, the Zoldyck siblings gathered a crowd with experience and style.

Killua knew exactly how Alluka moved, because he had been the only person even remotely capable of keeping up with her for the past two years. She was too skilled for her classmates, too skilled for her teachers. She was better than everyone he had ever seen her dance with. The family's agility and strength had applications that went beyond killing people. Alluka was more graceful than Kalluto, maybe even more than their mother. Really the only person who could equal her level of  poise would probably be, or maybe... _would have been_ Illumi. Since he had stopped dancing when he was fourteen, Killua had only ever seen it in the videos Milluki kept for purposes of blackmail.

When the song ended and the Zoldycks were finished, half of Ila's numerous teenage cousins were asking Alluka for the next dance.

Her absence left Killua and Gon staring at each other. This wasn't a club. The music was different. They were both completely sober. But there was no other option - they'd already danced with everyone else.

The music shifted into a popular song that was too fast for an intimate slow dance, but was clearly meant to be romantic. Gon reached for his hand, and put his other hand on his waist.

"This should be easy enough," he said hopefully.

It most absolutely was not.

Dancing with Gon was all-out war. Even though Killua was taller, and almost certainly more experienced, Gon seemed to think that he should lead. He would go one way, while Killua went another, and they'd just end up twisted up and out of step. He could hear Alluka and Leorio laughing from their table, and it just made him more committed to getting Gon under control, which just made Gon fight for dominance even harder. The struggle resulted in quite a few casualties, mainly the feet of the other couples on the floor around them.

Suzu and Ila were among the more egregious victims, but they took it in stride. Their resilience was particularly impressive, considering Gon had stepped directly on the small train of Suzu's elegant, form-fitting dress. When she inevitably tripped, her hair slammed into Ila's face, intricately braided dreads knocking his glasses to the floor.  

"Hey, so," she leaned back in her new husband's arms once they'd recovered, "Ila and I’ve been talking about it and we were wondering if you two wanted to come with us tomorrow? As long as you don't dance. Maybe ever again. Only sexy dancing from now on. Apparently that's all you can handle."

"On your honeymoon?," Killua ignored the jab. "Don't you two want to be alone?" He leaned into Gon, trying to push them in the same direction that the bride and groom were going so they could have an actual conversation. Unfortunately Gon was also pulling in that direction. The combined force ended up sending them flying past the couple and into some nearby tables. They barely missed taking out the DJ and some elderly relatives on the way.

"Would you just-"

"Killua, but I was-"

"I'm taller so I should-"

"Who says? That's not fair!"

Killua grabbed him by the hand and pulled them both back toward the center of the floor where Suzu and Ila were leaning into each other and watching, matching smug looks on their faces. Gon's fingers slotted between his as he caught up, and the tension from his arm went slack.  He turned to tell him once more " _let me lead, damn it_ ," but Gon wasn't paying attention. He was calling out to Alluka, telling her he knew at least two better dancers than her brother.

Alluka smiled gently. It was almost too gently, really. It didn't match the mood. She was supposed to laugh, tease Killua a bit herself like the bratty sister she was.

But he knew why she wasn't laughing.

The person who Alluka loved most hardly ever got any attention, but Gon was heaping it on Nanika even when she had to stay hidden. Killua had never mentioned anything about how lonely Nanika was, how much that loneliness haunted Alluka herself. But Gon seemed to just know what to do to make them both feel important and included.

Gon always seemed to know just what to do, even when he didn’t.

Killua yanked his hand again, pulling them closer, until spiky hair was rubbing coarse against his face. Roughly, awkwardly, he hugged him, placing a kiss somewhere into Gon’s hair where he wouldn't be able to feel it.

He felt like his heart was going to explode.

With no reaction from Gon to indicate that he had noticed Killua’s momentary lapse of sanity, Killua finished tugging them the last few feet to Suzu and Ila.

"We would really enjoy it if you two came along with us,” Ila calmly began, as though their conversation hadn't been interrupted by sheer mayhem. “We’re going to the southern part of the Azian continent. I checked a few minutes ago - there are still plenty of seats on the airship. I suspect that you're both quite a bit more knowledgeable about the location. And we'd appreciate the company."

"We've got the rest of our lives to be alone," Suzu chimed in with a shrug. "We're not really the classic honeymoon type. An extended camp out with friends is more our style."

"I’ve never been there, but I bet we could find you the best places!" Gon blurted out before Killua could get a word in edgewise. "We can definitely come. It'll be fun, right Killua?"

Killua dropped his hand.

_He was going to make them keep doing this._

“I, uh, actually, I have to take a job…”

“Don’t worry about that,” Gon insisted. “I can cover things for awhile.”

“I don’t think that’s…”

“Do you want to bring tents?” Gon was too excited to notice his protests. “Or sleep under the stars?”

“ _Tents_ ,” the newlyweds said together.

“And hotels when possible,” Suzu added. “I like my comforts when I can get them.”

“Well,” Gon tapped his chin thoughtfully, “I guess Killua and I can sleep under the stars either way, really.”

“ ** _GON_** _,_ ” he didn’t want to make a scene, but not in his worst nightmares could he imagine weeks more of this. But it would be even worse, traveling with two other people in close quarters, never able to let down their guard. “I have to take a job to _pay for Alluka’s tuition_. It’s not chump change, you idiot.”

Gon turned, and took his hand. “Don’t worry about any of that! Let me take care of you guys for awhile, okay?”

It wasn’t about the money, but there was no way to say that. “I don’t want you to do that, alright? I got this, but we can’t go.”

“But Killua, it’ll be fine!” Gon’s voice took on the edge of something desperate. “I’ll make sure that–“

Whatever his plans might have been, they were interrupted when someone’s drunken relation lost his balance on the way back from the bar and careened towards them. Gon caught the man, and Killua caught the drink that was milliseconds away from staining Suzu’s dress.

“Just _look_ at you, Suze!” the man raved. “All grown up! It’s like… only yesterday you were hitting my boys with…”

“We can talk about the trip later on,” Ila said over his shoulder, as the drunken man pulled them both toward the gift table. “Responsibility calls.”

Not caring who saw them, Killua yanked his hand out of Gon’s.

Forget it.

Forget all of it.

Leorio was right. It was his decision.

And he was going to fucking make it.  

 

* * *

  

The old government had been pretty terrible at governing. By the time it was overthrown, it was so full of corruption that it was pretty much on the verge of collapse anyway. But like a lot of corrupt governments, it had been pretty good at self-promotion, particularly in the form of statues. For eighty years, politicians erected romanticized versions of themselves in public squares all across the country. Deposits of local stone and, of course, the brass foundry made Brassford a place where such things had been mass-produced. Some of them never left.

By the time the government fell, there were two hundred and fifty statues in the city alone.

Locals had scrapped and smashed them at first, but eventually rebuilding the actual infrastructure of the region took precedence over destroying all memories of the old. So the demolished statues were just dumped on the unused edge of the parade grounds until someone figured out what to do with them.

No one ever had. The forest and parks grew around the heaps of once-public art until people just accepted the piles of heads and arms and legs as a part of the landscape. Plants wrapped themselves around the sculptures that remained more or less intact, slowly pulling them to dust with their roots and vines.

It was a strange, haunting place.

And it was where Gon finally caught up to him.

Even though Killua didn’t consider himself a person who ran off anymore, let alone someone who hid in the dark to assassinate people, those two skills were not something he’d easily forgotten. Kanmuru made it easy to get away from Gon, and the park was a fine place to hide. To gather his thoughts before he actually said what should have been said a long time ago.

It hadn’t taken Gon long at all. He could probably smell him, or at least the end of the ozone trail that kanmuru left.

"Killua, what’s going on?” Gon called out much too loudly. “You can’t just run off, that’s not what friends do.” He was going to get the attention of everyone in the park, any stragglers from the wedding. They were all going to see this, and Killua wasn’t sure what he’d rather, endure weeks more of this torture, or the embarrassment of it all falling apart in front of everyone, but he wasn’t about to find out.

“You can’t just make plans with _my friends_ without consulting me first,” he slipped out of the tree he’d been hiding in, “that’s what’s fucking wrong.”

Gon laughed nervously and leaned against the tree, “Uh, yeah, sorry about that. I just got excited, you know? Going on a real adventure with you… we haven’t done that in so long. I shouldn’t have just said we’d go, but really, I can pay for Alluka’s school. I still have most of my money from Greed Island, plus some more from other stuff. It’s more than enough.”

“I don’t _want_ you to pay for Alluka’s school,” Killua said through gritted teeth.

“But why, Killua?”

His aura started to crackle, sparks jumping from the crest of his hair to his neck, sliding down his spine to bury themselves in the dirt. He needed to ground himself, control his emotions, before he did something stupid, but there was too much momentum for that. The tension had been building up for days, and he hadn’t had a chance to get rid of any of it.

“Because it is my responsibility!” he shouted, feeling the jolt run up and down his arms. His fingers itched to slide into knives. “Because she is _my_ sister, and because you are _not_ my fucking boyfriend, so stop acting like it!”

“It doesn’t matter what I am, Killua!” Gon yelled back. “I still care about both of you, and I want to–”

"I can't fucking do this," he spat. The tension snapped, and he let go, hitting a collapsed statute with a bolt of lightning that shattered it into a million pieces. "You don't get it, you don't get _any of it!_ You never do, you just go on and do what you want because of course _Killua_ ," his voice was a mockery of the way Gon said his name but he couldn't stop himself, "will be there to make sure everything's okay in the end."

“Killua…” Gon started weakly, but Killua couldn’t hold back, he wouldn’t let himself.

“Things like this! This whole week has just been a _game_ to you! And you want to keep going! Playing chicken to see who gives up first, like we're still fucking twelve!” 

“ **It wasn** **’** **t!** ”

The fury in Gon’s voice echoed through the park and beyond. Turtledoves nesting in the trees scatted into the night. He took a single step forward revealing a face twisted into a mask of anger and despair. The movement seemed to be too much, and he curled back into himself, falling against the tree and holding his head in his hands.

“It wasn’t, Killua,” he whispered, sounding vulnerable in a way that was terrifying.

But he didn't say what it was.

A lifetime away, the sounds of revelry from the wedding were still going on.

“I was _so_ _stupid_! I ruined everything!" Gon shouted raggedly into his hands. "I just wanted to be together again."

It was too much.

 **“** _How dare you say that?_ Gon, **you** **didn** **’** **t want me anymore**!” Killua’s voice felt raw. The wound he thought had healed years ago was there all over again, open and yawning like it had just happened, threatening to swallow him up if he didn’t run, run, _run_ away.

“We were a team, we were partners, you were my _best_ _friend,_ and then you just… it wasn’t only that you said cruel things because you were pissed. Y-you… you threw me away when I should have been there for you the most! You said I didn’t care when I had followed you to the ends of the goddamn earth. But even that would have been bearable if you hadn't just given up on your _own fucking life_ , and left me to pick up the pieces!”

Gon said nothing, his eyes hidden in the garden shadows.

“How am I supposed to… how can I know that it all won’t just happen again? I can’t… Gon you will _eat me alive_ without even realizing it. You’re already doing it, and I don’t know how to make myself stop you. And I have more than just myself to worry about now!”

He gasped for breath, and for a long moment there was nothing but the far distant sound of music and the ragged noise of their breathing. Underneath him, the half-buried face of a shattered dictator looked up in anguish.

"I can't trust you anymore, Gon,” he could hear his own voice. But it didn’t feel like him. It felt like someone else saying things that he couldn’t make himself say.

“What's worse is I can't trust myself around you. It's probably better if we don't see each other that much."

Slipping his hands in his pockets, he slid into Zetsu and did the one thing that assassins did best.

He disappeared into the night.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I can only write angsty Leopikas. :/ OH and the reading Killua does is from the letters of Van Gogh. I read them at a wedding once myself. 
> 
> I AM SO SORRY THIS IS LATE.
> 
> My boyfriend left the country for an exciting summer doing research abroad, and time that was normally spent writing was spent cuddling. I tried to write large chunks in a single sitting, but to say this chapter was difficult would be an understatement. And I know I keep complaining about career stress, but words cannot express how rough things are right now. Please go easy on me.
> 
> Oh, also, I wanted to say something about replying to comments! I'm new to the hxh fandom, and I'm realizing that other writers in this section of AO3 don't reply to comments the way that people did in my old fandom. Either approach is fine, and I'm not trying to shame anybody! I personally like to do it - I have a lot of great conversations with really interesting people. I'm not going to stop, but I feel TERRIBLE, because now it looks like this story has WAY more comments than it actually does. So, I guess this is just an explanation and apology to anyone who is sorting stories by comment number - I didn't know you could do that because I am a moron, and I'm sorry if you got to this story by illegitimate means. :( 
> 
> And lastly, thank everyone who has left kudos, commented, or left me a message on tumblr. This fandom is so kind and encouraging, it's kind of blowing my mind.


	9. Just want to tell you so you know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said last chapter, there will at some point be smut in this story. Since some folks don't want to read that, which I totally get, and some folks don't like their stories spoiled, here is a compromise! At some point in the next two chapters, shit is gonna go down. When you see a series of Xs, instead of the normal space or line separating segments, you know that things are gonna get sexy, so if you don't want that, feel free to skip to the end! Whether that's gonna happen in this chapter, or another... well, you'll see.
> 
> Also, welcome to page 100.

Running away from Gon without using kanmuru was the only option. The light from his aura would be obvious, even from a distance, and the faint scent of burnt air was something Gon could follow without much effort - he'd already used it once to track him and Killua felt pretty certain that Gon, if he decided to follow him would do it indefinitely. Obligation kept him from going that far anyway.

But Killua had been taught stealth before he even learned to talk. Even without kanmuru, Gon would be hard-pressed to find him if he didn't want to be found.

Or so he thought.

It took about ten seconds before he heard his pursuer. Gon was in Zetsu, but he was also running at a breakneck pace, and he wasn't being quiet about it. A motorcycle driving through the undergrowth would make about the same amount of noise. So Killua stopped, doubled back, and headed in the opposite direction, which was thankfully also upwind. The noise of Gon's pursuit went on for a few more minutes until it died away completely, whether it was because he had gone out of earshot, or stopped moving was impossible to tell. He slowed down to a walk, increasing his chances of noticing if Gon managed to catch him.

His phone vibrated in his pocket a single time. A text. It was quite possibly from the last person in the world he wanted to talk to right now, but it might also be from Alluka, so he couldn't just ignore it.

Pulling out his phone and hiding its glow under his jacket, he read her message asking where he was.

**-Talking to Gon for awhile. Go to the hotel with Leorio when he leaves if I'm not back.-**

Hopefully he was vague enough to keep her from asking him more. He'd tell her soon enough, but right now he needed to dig himself a hole and wallow in it for awhile.

His phone buzzed again.

**-Have fun! ;)-**

He sent a quick text to Leorio saying pretty much the same thing, then turned his phone off completely. He hadn't done that in ages, not since Alluka started to go off to do her own thing. He'd kept his phone on vibrate in class, in theatres, and even during jobs that required absolute stealth. Now here he was, turning it off for the first time so he could hide from his best friend.

Gon was such a fucking idiot.

Killua stopped walking altogether, and crouched down in a bit of particularly thick undergrowth next to a tree. He hadn't planned on things ending up this way. On saying so much. But Gon's boneheaded insistence that they keep up this whole charade and the intrusion into Killua's personal responsibilities had finally taken things too far. Gon was doing the _same damn thing -_ whatever he wanted - while he was left to pick up the pieces.

He sighed internally, keeping his entire body still. Hiding wasn't the way to go about things either, but he wasn't about to stop.

If Gon found him, they would talk.

 

Of course Gon found him.

"Five minutes apart isn't really what I was talking about," he stood, keeping his hands in his pockets and his head down.

Gon was staring at him, he could feel the intensity without even seeing him. It was impressive, really, how well he had managed to locate him so quietly, considering how loud he'd started off.

"I know but, this won't work, Killua!"

He wasn't a small boy with a broken arm, covered in his own vomit anymore, but he was still just as stubborn.

"You can't resolve this by refusing to leave me alone," he buried his hands deeper, knowing it was a pointless argument but making it anyway. "That's not how this shit works."

"Well you can't just hold things in and not tell me, then decide we can't be friends anymore!" Gon countered with a defiance normally reserved for murderers. "It's not fair," his voice was softer, "It's kind of... cruel..."

Killua turned his head, "Are _you_ going to seriously lecture me about being cruel?"

Gon took a breath like he was going to argue, then exhaled sadly. "I guess that's not fair either."

"I'm moving my stuff to Alluka's room," Killua muttered. "I'm taking her back to school tomorrow, and then picking up a job. No one will even notice us leaving separately. Give me some space for awhile."

"We've had five years of space, Killua!" Gon protested. He wasn't wrong. "Just... let me talk a little. And then I'll leave all three of you alone forever if that's what you really want."

"I can't tell you what Alluka and Nanika want. You have to ask them."

"Can I talk or not?"

Killua sighed.

"You've got five minutes."

 

“Killua said once that he'd never had a friend before me,” Gon began quietly. “But I… I never had a friend either. Not one my age, at least. And when you're a kid... that matters a lot.”

It was annoying, because Killua knew exactly what he meant, and it hadn't even been thirty seconds yet.

“Mito-san, she loves me, and she took good care of me, but I spent most of the time outside of the house by myself. There was one other kid on the island, a little girl named Noko, and she only ever wanted to play house. Inside. And maybe it was mean, it was definitely selfish, but I just didn't think it was _fun_ so we weren't friends. Sometimes, kids would come on the island on fishing trips, and we would play in town, but they always left the next day. Sometimes they wouldn't even tell me their names. Everyone always left," he shrugged, "My dad left before he even _knew_ me. When I met you I didn’t...” his voice quavered, “It doesn’t make it okay, but I didn’t know _how_ to be friends with someone who would just _always_ be there for me. Who wouldn't leave. And somehow I just knew right away that Killua wasn't the kind of person who would leave.”

“Gon…” Killua started, then thought the better of it and waved his hand for him to continue.

"Ging left because having a kid didn’t work out with what he wanted,” Gon continued softly. “Mito-san, she would never leave but... she's beautiful and kind and wonderful, and because of me she never had time to think about what she wanted. No one had to tell me I was a burden, but it was hard not to think so. It didn’t seem like something to focus on, so I just made sure I was strong enough to take care of myself. And then I went where Mito-san couldn't go, doing things she couldn't do. Once I started meeting new people, I just wanted to help everyone! I knew friends were important, maybe the most important, but there’s a place between being selfish and selfless where real friends are supposed to be...”

"The place where you don't abandon your friends and try to kill yourself, maybe?" Killua muttered darkly.

“Yes!" Gon glanced at him with burning eyes, and he had to look away. "Killua was…  he was _so loyal_. I didn’t… I didn’t know what to do with you, with _anyone_ who could stay by my side. And there’s something really dark in me, and I don’t know what it is, or where it came from, but when I saw Kite it just… ”

Gon reached out and grabbed his arm, forcing him to look.

"What I said... what I did... I can't take those things back. I know that. But I never wanted you to go. I didn’t want you to _ever_ leave, but I didn’t know how to keep you.”

"You can't _keep_ people, Gon. We aren't things! We stay because we want, because we need something... or maybe because we care."

Gon nodded, "I know that now, but... Kite was dead and it was _my fault._ I didn't know how to live, knowing that I killed him."

The wave of nausea that hit him was jarring, but not unexpected. "Take it from an expert, you didn't fucking kill him..."

Gon laughed mirthlessly, "Yeah, that's what Ging said too."

"Well we agree on a total of two things then." He didn't say what the other thing was, but Gon didn't need to know that. 

"The only other thing Ging ever said that was worth much of anything was that someday I would find what was more important than what I wanted."

It sounded like the ravings of a drunk. "That doesn't make any sense. I think your dad is crazy."

"No, but, he was right!," Gon argued with eyes that begged for understanding. "It had already happened when he told me at the top of the World Tree. I wanted to find him, but I ended up finding people who were a lot more important. Friends, people like Leorio and Kurapika, Zushi and Wing, Knuckle and Shoot, Bisky and Palm. Even _Hisoka_ probably taught me more than Ging ever did, in his creepy way. But more than anyone else, I found _you,_ Killua, my best friend _._ And you were everything, reliable like Leorio, smart like Kurapika, and strong enough that I didn't ever have to hold back."

Furious as he was, Killua's ears started to turn red and he turned away.

"I get it! You like me okay? We're... friends. You don't have to say stuff like that all the time. I..." he looked at Gon and back at the ground, "already know."

Gon didn't say anything for a long moment.

 _"_ I guess I just got selfish back at the wedding. I didn’t want this to end.”

He needed to outright say what he meant, but Killua didn't have the guts to just ask. "What are you _getting at_ Gon?" he shouted instead, impatient with Gon, but more with himself. 

"I keep trying to apologize, to say how I felt when I really took the time to think about what happened that night when I lost it, but Killua _won't let me_!" Gon shouted back. 

Feelings or not, this was just too much. "Maybe because it's not all about you? Maybe, Gon, maybe just for ONCE I want to talk about things on my own terms, do things on my own time??"

"What do you think I've been doing?" Gon said through gritted teeth. "If we were moving at my pace, we would a lot more naked and a lot less angry!"

Until that moment, Killua had no idea that the line between frustration and arousal was the width of a hair.

Everything and nothing made sense.

Because _none of this had been pretend_.

"You should um, just forget I said that," Gon was blushing, which was rare enough to make everything so much worse. "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to pressure you, just... forget it. Also, you said five minutes and it's exactly that right now."

"I don't think I can forget it, Gon," Killua's voice cracked. He didn't care how long they'd been talking, they weren't going to stop now.

"I'm afraid if I say anything you'll just go along with it. You mostly always do what I want and... I don't want that," he ended lamely, wringing his hands.

"Well, I don't fucking trust you right now," Killua scoffed, "so don't worry about that. I don't even understand what you've been doing for the last five years!"

"Getting stronger," Gon said quietly. "Getting as strong as I could."

"I mean, you already _were_ really damn..."

"No, in different ways than just fighting. I needed to train with all kinds of people. And I needed to stop being so selfish. I needed to be... better."

"What are you talking about?"

"I ran into you accidentally once, about a year ago," the subject veered in a different direction, one that he didn't understand. Why was this relevant? If he'd seen them, why hadn't Gon just said something then?

"A year ago? Did you see us in an airship or something? A year ago would have been in..."

"It was in Yorknew."

Killua took a ragged breath. The air between them might as well have been Ren. He had his answer.

"It was really rainy. A thunderstorm. You were standing outside a hospital, making sparks with your fingers because you didn't think anyone could see. And something was on your mind, or you would have noticed me, I think..."

He'd seen. He'd _seen_. The night Alluka kicked him out of her room, when she told him he was driving her crazy, to go back to the hotel and give her some space.

"I wasn't even looking for you yet," Gon laughed bitterly, "but there was Killua. The person I had worked so hard to find... just... right there! And I couldn't..." he coughed, or maybe it was a sob, it was hard to tell. "I wasn't ready - I knew that you were hiding for some reason, and I hadn't passed my last test."

"Test?"

"The one where I could find a member of your family without getting caught _by_ your family. So they wouldn't follow me to wherever you and Alluka were. Um... your little brother is a member of the Ryodan, if you didn't already know..."

Faces rolled out of the fog in his mind. Illumi, the Ryodan, _Kalluto_.

_Had his brothers killed each other?_

No. He wasn't going to think about that. Ever. Not ever again.

"So you saw me?" he swallowed.

He knew the night Gon was talking about. The damp, cold night in early fall, the first night of Alluka's weeklong stay at the clinic.

When he was worried and cold and so so lonely. 

The first night with Asher.

"Yeah," Gon exhaled heavily. "I saw you kiss him, and then I left. I had to. I was meeting a contact. If I had stayed any longer, I would have lost your brother's trail for another three months."

"Why didn't you just-"

"Because it could have hurt you! I'm an idiot, but I'm not always stupid. I figured your family was watching me, waiting for me to come after you. I thought they had an eye on your brother too. I had to see if I could track him down without them noticing... cause I swore I was never gonna hurt you again. I worked really, really hard to try make that happen."

Gon's name fell out of his mouth before he could catch it.

"I can never fix what I did, but I saw you kiss him and I left. And not because it didn't hurt. Because it hurt a lot."

"I slept with him you know," he said. It was cruel, but he had to say it. He wasn't going to wait like last time. 

Gon twitched and then nodded, humming his acknowledgement. He knew. And he had probably known then. Smelled it or something. 

"You really just... left? Even though we were both right there?"

A sharp nod was his answer.

"How did you know that I...?"

"You looked so lonely, and then when you saw him, your face lit up a little. I thought maybe..."

"I wasn't in love with him or anything like that. But I don't regret it. It was nice."

Gon swallowed and nodded.

"But I didn't... it's not like..." he stammered. His heart was pounding in his ears. Gon wasn't who he thought he was.

He was a hell of a lot more.

And he deserved to fucking know it.

"I guess you should probably know that I'm in love with you, you ass. This whole conversation would be a little easier."

Gon swallowed down a choking sob, which wasn't really the response he expected.

"But you don't _trust me_ , Killua. It's still not okay."

Killua laughed, "I can't trust you if you don't tell me shit. Like what you just told me? Maybe you could have brought that up awhile ago?"

"But I didn't know how you felt!" Gon shouted angrily. "I can't read your mind, Killua. You never tell me how you feel, and you act confusing, and I'm kind of stupid sometimes. I need you to _talk_ to me!"

"Yeah? It never seemed to stop you before!"

"I was twelve!" Gon grabbed his shoulder and yanked so they were facing each other. "I DIDN'T KNOW I WAS IN LOVE WITH YOU THEN!"

"WELL YOU'RE NOT TWELVE NOW!" Killua fisted his shirt, lifting his face closer.

There were crickets. The sound of running water. And over it all, the mingled sound of their breathing.

He had no idea who kissed who first, but if anyone was going to ask, he'd insist he did it himself.

 

Gon really had no idea how to kiss, but it didn't matter, because what he lacked in experience he made up for in enthusiasm. His lips were chapped, even a little scratchy on the edges, but soft, so soft, in the center. Killua's hands let go of his shirt to wrap around the back of his head, burying his fingertips into the coarse hair at the nape of Gon's neck.

It was real. It was real. It was real.

Large, strong hands wrapped around Killua's waist and gently pushed him back into a tree. But the steady action was incongruent with the rest of Gon's body. He'd begun to tremble so much that Killua lowered his hands to his shoulders to hold him still and pulled away gently.

"Are you okay?"

The light from a streetlamp caught Gon's eyes, illuminating them into a sparkling amber. He bit his lip, "It's just that.. you still didn't let me say what I've got to say."

"Huh?"

"That I'm sorry."

Oh. That sparkle was tears.

"I'm sorry, Killua," they started to fall. "I'm so, so sorry. I-I worked really hard to be better," he coughed, "and I'm never going to do it again."

His fingers tightened, grasping the fabric on Gon's vest. He realized he'd needed this, a _real_ apology, for years, more than kissing, more than a confession, more than anything, but now that he had it, there was only one possible response.

"I'm sorry too," it was harder to say than he expected. "Sorry I never... that I couldn't tell you things."

"Are you still going to leave?"

Killua laughed softly, blinking to keep the tears from gathering in his own eyes.

"Well yeah, but you should probably come with me."

 

* * *

 

"Gon," he mumbled, feeling warm calloused fingers slide under the waistband of his boxer briefs. The word came out much less as a warning, and more as a groan. He cleared his throat and tried again. " ** _Gon_** _,_ " he said more urgently.

He got a nervous laugh in response and Gon's hand pulled away, "Ah... sorry, Killua. I kind of forgot we were in an elevator."

He took the opportunity to step back. The movement left Gon leaning against the elevator wall, looking back at him with a dopey grin. It had taken them nearly an hour to get back to their room once they left the park, because not making out had become somewhat of an extreme difficulty.

The park had been nice, but there had been a lot of bugs. Eventually the wedding had begun to disperse. There were a total of about five people who, given the chance to see Killua with his shirt half undone and Gon's tongue down his throat, would make his life a living hell. Four of them had just been let loose into the night.

So the two of them moved on, taking a back way to the hotel to make it unlikely that they'd run into anyone.

Slamming into a brick wall every few alleys had been... well, exciting, actually. The thrill of getting caught by _strangers_ was pretty tantalizing. But things had been _progressing_ and he wasn't going let Gon lose it next to a pile of trash that smelled like Ging. He didn't know how long either of them could hold back, which led to their current situation.

"No it's not that," he clarified. "Well, it is, but actually I wanted to talk before we go back to the room cause..."

"We don't have to do anything!" Gon blurted out. "Not if Killua doesn't..."

"Damn it, Gon, if you don't know how much I want to..." he swallowed down what he was going to say. "We've been dry humping each other for about two hours. At this point, if you can't tell, I think you need serious help."

He realized, considering the events of the past week, the current evening most specifically, that the statement was profoundly stupid. So, by way of evidence, he waved his hands in the general direction of his uncomfortably tight pants.

"Yes, I fucking want to, okay? But we have to talk about it first. I know that's not very... uh... hot, or whatever, but it's necessary." He fumbled with his wallet, which felt much heavier than normal and pulled out two pieces of folded paper. With careful hands he straightened one and handed it over.

Gon squinted at the printout, looking confused.

"I know you're a virgin, but I'm not. I got tested before Alluka and I went on vacation, though. I'm clean, that says it. I mean, there's one thing they can't really test for very well, but it's been a year since I've been with anybody, and I haven't had any symptoms so..."

Gon handed back the results, smiling a little as the elevator dinged and the doors opened, "Why didn't you just tell me, Killua? I would have believed you."

He scowled, and handed over the other document as they moved to the hall. "You weren't even gonna ask! Anyway, you shouldn't just take stuff like that on faith, Gon!"

"Well, I don't have some paper that says I've never had sex! You're just trusting me."

"It's pretty obvious you've never done anything," Killua scoffed. "You kissed like a can opener the first few times."

Gon stuck out his tongue.

"This isn't a perfect process, okay?" Killua buried his hands in his pockets as they walked down the corridor. He had to do something with them that wasn't grabbing Gon's arm and yanking them as quickly as possible into their room. "I mean, we can wait until a clinic opens up in two days, if you _really want."_

"Would that be safer for you?" Gon looked at the second set of results, "Also, Killua, I don't understand a single word on this so..."

"It's a toxicology screening. I'm not... poisonous."

Gon grinned, and opened his mouth to say something, probably something awful, but his smug look faded as a very predictable thought formed in his head.

"Wait, what if I'm..."

Killua snorted, "Gon, you'd be dead before that would happen. I think only people in my family have to worry about this."

He wished he hadn't said that. The thought of any of his family members jerking off into a cup to make certain their jizz wasn't full of poison was nearly enough to destroy his desire to have sex with anyone ever again.

"But still, Killua. You're trusting me. Why wouldn't you think I'd trust you?"

"It's not just that! I'd just rather know for myself! Of course I wouldn't... I don't want to make you sick, okay? But you're _too_ trusting! This is what you're supposed to do!"

"Well, okay, but... I still feel like it's not very fair for you to have to do all this work then just trust me. I mean... especially if it's what you're supposed to-"

He grabbed Gon by the collar and slammed him against the door of their room. He lowered his head until his lips were almost brushing the olive skin of his neck. His voice was low as he said, "Gon, we are going to go in there, take off our clothes, and get each other off, or I swear I will kick your ass so hard you can't see straight."

Gon's breath fluttered against his ear, "How about both?"

XXX

It was a lot easier to talk about getting naked than it was to actually do it. Gon had _seen him_ naked before. Possibly quite recently; they hadn't been particularly vigilant about hiding themselves when they were changing. And it wasn't like they both didn't want it. Gon was walking like it actually hurt to move, and Killua was ready to swear off tight pants forever.

But when the door shut behind them, they just stood there, staring at each other. In the last alley, the one right next to the hotel, they'd taken the time to rebutton their shirts, and retie Gon's bowtie, so now they had to start again from the beginning, except for Killua's jacket. He'd taken it off immediately and sat on a chair. The thing had been insanely expensive, and he wasn't about to ruin it.

The fact that he was thinking about jacket costs clearly indicated that, although the desire wasn't gone, the momentum certainly was.

He reached for the end of Gon's bowtie and pulled it off.

"I can't believe you put this thing around your neck. It's ridiculous."

"Regular ties get in your way when you fight, though," Gon said.

They both paused.

Gon reached out and touched the top button of his shirt. He smiled sheepishly and said, "Sorry Killua."

"Huh? Why are you-?"

Gon transmuted the tiniest blade imaginable onto the tip of his finger, and sliced all the way down the line of buttons.

"You little _fuck!_ "

Ripping off each other's clothes wasn't so difficult after that.

He was faster, much faster, and Gon was down to his boxers in a blink of an eye. He threw him across the room, onto the bed, and pulled down his own pants and folded them over a chair so they didn't get ruined.

Gon was just getting upright when he made it to the edge of the bed, or at least he seemed to be. But the hand that grabbed his and pulled him down had clearly been anticipating his move. Gon was on top of him, kissing with no regard whatsoever for teeth or technique. It was sloppy and delirious and wonderful and when he pushed him off, laughing, Gon immediately attacked his neck, with soft bites and hard kisses and then soft kisses and hard bites. Killua ran his nails down his back, and then grabbed his ass with both hands. 

Gon groaned loud enough to wake the dead.

The sound stopped both of them in their tracks. His hands fell away and Gon stopped sat up, his knee between Killua's thighs. Killua propped himself up, breathing heavily.

The intensity in Gon's eyes was all consuming. "Killua... would you touch yourself for me?"

"Don't _you_ want to do that, you idiot?" he was red from the tips of his ears to the soles of his feet. There was no possible way he could say no if Gon looked at him like that for even a second longer.

"I want to see how you do it first," Gon didn't break eye contact. "I don't have a lot of experience, you know, with anybody..."

"Don't pretend to me that you've never jerked off," he stalled.

"Well, yeah, I have, but it's different than touching you. I mean, for one thing you're cut and I'm not so, I mean..." he jumped on the bed behind him and yanked back so that Killua was settled between his legs. He could feel the heat of Gon's skin against the arch of his spine, the bob of his erection against his lower back. If he moved at all, he could feel the gap in Gon's boxers open up, and the full heat of his arousal slid against him. And even though he wasn't in front of him anymore, he could still see that intense gaze.

"And what, you're just going to watch?" Killua looked down angrily, but all there was down there was his own dick, betraying him with how fucking hard it was, so he looked at the wall instead, and just saw Gon's face again.

Gon hummed his assent brightly, wrapping his arms around Killua's stomach to pull him even closer. When he was positioned where Gon seemed to want him, he felt blunt fingers begin to trace gentle lines up and down the ridges of his abs.

"Killua, I've wanted to do this for a really _really_ long time," Gon whispered in his ear. And somehow he managed to electrify his aura or something, because his words passed Killua's brain and went straight to his dick.

"Fine," he grumbled, pushing back into Gon so he could lift up his hips and wiggle out of his boxer briefs. As soon as they were halfway over his ass, he didn't know how much further he should go. All the way? That's not normally what he did when he was getting himself off, but this was supposed to be sex, wasn't it? So all the way? But then he would be the only one naked.

"Do you need help?" Gon whispered again, his teeth catching on the shell of his ear.

He pulled his underwear all the way off and threw them somewhere, he had no idea where they ended up.

Sitting back down awkwardly, he waited for the barrage of commentary on his equipment. Or at least the bemused or even surprised observation about the carpet matching the drapes that he'd gotten from his two other partners. But Gon was, surprisingly silent, which was somehow even worse.

"Well there you go. Nothing you haven't seen before," he muttered, grabbing his own thighs because he was so hard it was reaching the point of discomfort, but he felt too awkward to just start _going at it_ either.

Gon made a little noise into his shoulder, somewhere between a groan and a whimper.

It wasn't a written invitation, but it was motivation enough.

They'd been making out for hours, so it wasn't like there wasn't any lubrication to work with. He could also make his own if necessary. But he'd never jacked off in front of anyone before, or even been _caught_ jacking off, so he had no idea if the situation would make him come faster than normal. So he started slow, like he was alone in his room, and not in Gon's lap on the verge of falling apart from arousal. He put his hand around the base, and then just... left it there, because, shockingly, masturbating in front of someone who you'd been hung up on for years was actually not all that easy, no matter how turned on you were.

Behind him, Gon pressed his face into Killua's shoulder and cleared his throat. He felt the reverberations down his back. His balls felt even tighter.

"Please, Killua? I don't want to mess anything else up, so show me how to make you feel good."

Killua pulled his hand upward into the first stroke. The instant he got close to the tip he had to slide his hand back down, because he was too sensitive, and going to lose it almost immediately if he focused there. 

One of Gon's hands slid upwards until a roughly calloused fingertip was drawing gentle circles on his nipple.

"You're really sensitive, aren't you, Killua?" Gon said kissing his neck. Was he trying to talk dirty? Or just curious? It didn't matter, the effect was the same. 

He didn't respond, but he might as well have said yes, since he was only swiping over the head on every third stroke. Gon's other hand had slid down to his hip and was tracing his inguinal muscle down to the point where it met his pubic hair.

Killua began to build up a rhythm.

"I thought about Killua like this so much," as he spoke Gon was probably not even aware of the steadily increasing cant of his own hips against Killua's back. "When I was touching myself, I thought that sometimes you might be too. All opened up and pretty like this. Did you ever think about me?"

He gasped involuntarily.

"Does that mean you did?" Gon shamelessly pressed.

"I tried not to," Killua said through gritted teeth. The fingers on his nipple had switched from gentle tracing to rougher plucking, and every pinch sent a jerk right to his cock. It felt like he'd been doing this for less than thirty seconds, but he was already so close to coming it was impossible to hold on for much longer.

"What'd you think about?"

Killua let his head fall back against Gon's chest as his hand moved much faster than he really wanted it to. 

"Sucking you off," he gasped out, feeling too good to be embarrassed anymore.

That was it for both of them.

Somewhere far away he could feel Gon's arms tighten around him and his head curl into his shoulder as he came, but his own orgasm was too demanding to pay the sort of attention he would have liked.

Gon fell back against the headboard, and Killua fell back against him, or would have, but a strong arm propped him up, and then Gon was wiggling out of his own boxers, and using them to wipe off Killua's back. Shrugging, Killua reached for one of the dozens of pillows on the bed, ripped off the pillowcase and cleaned himself off too.

He chuckled as Gon laid him down on the mattress, flopping down next to him, but the laugh died in his throat.

Because Gon was still extremely hard.

He didn't know why he was surprised because they were _nineteen_ , apparently that was one of the benefits of being young. Even if it wasn't, Gon was, well, _Gon_ but regardless it was still a bit shocking. He looked down at himself, and although he wasn't there yet, he would be pretty soon.

Might as well take advantage of the situation.

"So, you can't make me talk about that and then not let me do it," he said evenly while Gon panted heavily next to him. The one nice thing about getting himself off was how easy it was to recover.

Gon's pupils grew laughably large, and his panting increased in volume and speed.

"You really want to?"

Killua rolled his eyes, running his palm across the bulge of Gon's quads. "Are you really _that_ surprised that I want to suck your dick?"

Gon swallowed, looking a little panicked. His previous actions were starting to make sense. Asking Killua to touch himself... wanting to watch... Gon didn't think he knew what he was doing. He was _nervous_.

It made something wicked light up and shoot down Killua's spine.

He was going to run with it. 

"Cause, I do, you know," he lowered his head and gently ran his lips up the inside of Gon's thigh. "But I'm not gonna be nice about it," he said into the skin. "Especially after all the shit you put me through this past week. All you had to do was say something, you know..." he stopped dangerously close to where Gon wanted him and then leaned back.

"K-Killua, you _know_ that I was just trying to give you - oh fuck -"

He had never head that word come out of Gon's mouth. It sounded so hot in this context that Killua felt himself twitch. But that went unnoticed, because Gon was too busy clutching the blanket as Killua grazed his sharpened fingernail across the juncture between his hip and leg.

"Hm, Gon? What were you trying to give me?" he stroked the delicate skin in a long back and forth motion. Gon didn't have any freckles here at all, just a single mole right before his pubic hair got thick.

He said something, but it wasn't really a word.

"I won't do it if you don't want me to," Killua looked into his eyes. "We can try some other time."

Gon shook his head violently.

"I don't know what you mean, Gon," he skimmed his fingertips across his hair, so close but not touching, not yet. "No not now? You're gonna have to be a little clearer."

"P-please..." Gon's voice cracked.

"Please what?"

"Give me a blowjob."

"There's the blunt answer I was looking for," Killua settled his hand down and grasped the base, adjusting to the unfamiliar thickness.

Gon gasped.

Killua leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on the head. "Remember that you asked."

 

"PleaseKilluapleasejustletmeKilluaplease," Gon babbled from his prone position on the mattress. His thighs were trembling uncontrollably and Killua could see his pulse jumping on a small bit of skin on his hip.

"You would have already if you didn't lose it when I got myself off. Which you _asked_ me to do, by the way," Killua said in a conversational tone that wasn't at all suitable for a man who was using his hand to establish a torturously uneven rhythm at someone else's expense. He'd been going at this for awhile, and even though his wrist and mouth were only a little sore, it was getting more and more difficult to ignore his own erection.

Gon was nearly weeping at this point, so he figured it was time to let him off the hook. He wrapped his lips around him and took him as deep as he could, wrapping his hand around the base. Using his hand and mouth and tongue at the same time, he fell into an aggressive rhythm. Gon was trembling even harder now, guttural moans unintelligible except for Killua's name.

And then he came, without any warning whatsoever, unless you could call complete silence a warning. His hips thrust forward, knocking himself into the back of Killua's throat and making him gag.

"Are you trying to choke me to death?" he asked when it was over, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

Gon grinned a wide slow grin. His eyes were hooded and he looked kind of drunk. 

"Sorry Killua," he mumbled, not sounding sorry at all.

  

Some time later, Gon was wrapped around him, one hand playing with the hair on his head, the other twisting small knots in the downy hair just below his belly button. They'd been lying there for awhile, listening to the sound of each other breathe. Killua was still hard, but contentment overcame any desire he had to do anything about it. Gon's shoulders were so much broader than his were, and though he'd never in a million years admit it, it felt comforting being wrapped in his arms.

"Killua... have you ever um... been inside before?" Gon broke the pleasant silence with a sledgehammer. 

The question was sincere, if ridiculously worded.

"Damn it Gon, you sound twelve when you say it like that," Killua snorted with laughter. It took several moments to stop laughing long enough to answer.

"No. I have never done anyone up the ass. Or... been done. I'm assuming that's what you want to know."

"Do you want to?"  Gon wasn't the slightest bit embarrassed.

The remains of Killua's laughter turned into a startled cough.

"What, _right now_??" 

Gon propped himself up on his elbow and leaned over so he could see his face.

"Well, not if you don't want to," he kissed his forehead then smirked. "But you seem to want _something_..." he nudged his knee, "so... yeah..."

"There's a reason I've never done it before, and that's cause it's not a thing you just.. _do,_ you know? It takes time, and..."

Gon dropped his elbow and started to kiss his neck, "And?"

"Practice. Also we don't have any lube. I could make some, I guess, but still. I don't think it's a great idea right away."

The hand returned to his stomach, but now Gon was gently running his fingertips across his skin.

"But that means you want to eventually?"

"Sure seems like _you_ do, the way you're asking." 

Gon's hand moved away and he stopped kissing his neck for a moment.

"I just think," Gon's hand, warm and wet, wrapped around his cock, "that it'd be nice."

"Nice, eh?" Killua leaned back into his chest as his hand started to move.

Gon chuckled, and he could feel the rumble in his own ribcage.

"I think I'd want to be inside you, Killua," he said softly. "Would you like that?"

"Maybe..." he sighed, feeling his hips start to move against Gon's. He was getting hard again, Killua could feel it. He wanted this to last, slow and easy, after being so frantic about everything at first.

"I'd be gentle, I think," Gon's lips moved against his ear. "I'd try at least..."

"I'm not made of glass, Gon," Killua stretched into him like a cat.

"Well that's good," Gon started to thrust against him, "because after awhile, I think it'd be really tough not to just fuck you."

Killua's heart nearly stopped. The hand on his cock was moving faster now, and he needed to slow him down a little. Coming so quick was okay for the first time, but after that it was kind of embarrassing. But the way things were going it would be pretty inevitable. Especially since he could feel Gon's smug smile against his ear. 

"I tried not to think about it for _years,"_ he continued, well aware of the effect of his words. "It seemed like a really bad thing, thinking about fucking your best friend when you touch yourself. But I couldn't help it, Killua. I didn't even know how tall you'd gotten, I just had to make it up in my head."

That was it.

He rolled over and pushed Gon onto his back, kissing him while he straddled his legs, taking both of them in one hand.

"Are you disappointed?" he asked as he leaned back so Gon could see.

Gon shook his head as he moaned, and Killua leaned down to kiss him again. They were both still sweaty, and their chests moved slickly against each other. He could slow things down in a minute, but payback was fair play.

Gon grabbed his ass with one hand, which was expected. But then took his free hand in the other, twining their fingers together. Killua opened his eyes in surprise at the gesture and pulled his lips away.

"I'm glad you said it first," Gon choked out.

"Said what?" he was so close, already, but he couldn't hold back.

Gon shuddered.

"That you love me."

Killua came harder than he ever had in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Half of this is awkward first-time sex. I AM GOING TO HELL.
> 
> Okay, so I didn't change the rating to an E because within the story are content warnings, to keep people from reading the unwanted porn. MAYBE THAT IS CHEATING, but also, sometimes I don't want to read sex, but I would read around it?
> 
> God I don't know, please call me out if you think I'm being wildly unethical. 
> 
> Also, as you probably know, safe sex should include you and your partner getting tested together WHATEVER they say about their past experience or testing history. It should also include condoms even for oral sex. I know that doesn't always happen (obviously, I didn't write it exactly that way) but I felt that I should say it regardless.


	10. The overwhelming light surrounding us

He woke up with the stars in his eyes.

Gon was pretty much on top of him, one broad arm across his chest, holding onto his elbow much harder than was really necessary. His head was buried in Killua's shoulder. Thick spikes of hair were tickling his neck - they were probably what had woken him up in the first place.

Actually they weren't.

The noise of the fan, along with the hundred other humming sounds of a fully functioning building had all stopped. The power had gone out. That was why he could see the night sky so well; the streetlights were all out. Without the sound of the fan, refrigerator, and other machines, the obvious soundproofing of the walls and quiet of the hall made the room one of the most silent places he'd been in awhile.

He looked up at the sky again. The moon had set some time ago, leaving the wide arm of the galaxy with no competition whatsoever. Millions of points of light spilled across the utter blackness.

Stars were not an assassin's friend. They were easily blotted out, drawing attention to shadows that would have otherwise blended into complete nothingness. In some ways, they were worse than the moon. Illumi had taught him to avoid them.

But Illumi was dead.

Keeping his breath even, he forced the thought to stay. Illumi, his brother, was gone.

It would be easy to be happy about it. Illumi was the one who put the needle in his head, after all. He was the one who wanted Nanika, the one who treated Alluka like she was nothing, even worse than just insisting she was a boy, like the rest of their family. He would have taken both of them and left Gon to die. If he were still alive, he'd probably still give anything for the chance to put use another needle in someone, this time to manipulate Nanika's power.

Illumi was a fucking scumbag.

But his voice was also the first sound Killua could remember hearing, cracking awkwardly as he turned the pages of a book. It was a voice that would eventually teach Killua to read himself. Illumi had been the one who had bandaged his fingers after Mother's sessions, humming tunelessly, efficient gestures masking a gentle touch. Illumi had sent him chocorobos and boring postcards of pastoral landscapes during his two years at Heaven's Arena. Illumi had bought him his skateboard, insisting that it would improve his balance and flexibility over Father's protests that it was a frivolous waste of time.

Killua had been declared the Zoldyck heir at the age of nine, barely even understanding what that meant, other than a lot more work than he'd been expecting. Shortly after, Illumi had taken complete control over his training. But instead of tuneless humming, and poorly-timed, humorless jokes, there was silence. Possessiveness. And slowly, the quiet doubts in Killua's head gained a voice, and that voice bound him stronger than chains. Something had rotted his brother from the inside out.

Despite that, Illumi had loved him, in the only way he seemed to know how, probably till the end.

Uneven love was desolation.

Gon snorted loudly, strong arm clutching him tighter.

It was a relief that he stayed asleep; Killua's thoughts were making enough of a racket to wake almost anyone. He brought his free arm close draping it across Gon's back to reach the only part of Gon's arm he could see without moving - his bicep. It rose and fell with their synced breath, a tracery of scars catching the pale light in the room. Most of them were new, at least to him. They came in and out of view as Gon's muscles, tensed from their grip, jumped as he twitched in slumber.

Killua knew what the inside of this arm looked like. He'd seen it sliced away, up close, though there was no scar there now.

Then he'd seen Gon die.

The pile of hair that he'd dug through to find the suddenly shrunken body. The smell of that same hair burning as he restarted Gon's heart. The shrivel of skin that withered away against his arms...

"Killua?" Gon's voice was a low, sleep-laden rumble. "Your heart's beating really fast."

He didn't say anything at first.

He didn't know how to put it into words. Gon wasn't Illumi. He wasn't part of his messed up family. There was nothing Gon had that Killua could take away. Even if there had been, he didn't think it would be possible to turn Gon's affections, even if he tried. 

But love was still so dangerous. 

"I need you to promise me something," he whispered. He couldn't say it louder. It was hard to ask for anything sincerely when he wasn't angry. Harder than almost anything. 

Gon lifted his head, brushing stiff tufts of hair against Killua's face in the process. His eyes were only half open.

"I think so," he said blearily. "Probably I -"

The full vulnerability of what he was about to do hit him, souring his words into a threat. "If you can't do it, or if you lie..."

"'M not gonna lie, Killua..." Gon shook his head, knocking his hair into Killua's face again, "too sleepy for lying."

"Okay, then..." he took a deep breath. There had to be a way to do this that didn't make him feel so pathetic, but he couldn't think of a single one.

Actually, there probably wasn't.

"You've gotta promise not to lose your shit if I get hurt or killed." Because he couldn't go on, knowing that the closer they grew, the more at risk he put Gon to lose himself completely. The long line of their lives stretched out in front of him, and he knew that things would never not be dangerous, no matter how strong they got. He lifted his body and turned his head to get a better position. Instead of the sleepy face he expected, he found himself staring into two very alert brown eyes.

The quiet stillness of the room grew thick with something, and he could almost feel the twining tendrils of Gon's Nen begin to form. The heavy thing between them was still there. It might always be there.

"I thought Killua might worry about that sooner or later," Gon exhaled. He rolled onto his back, continuing the movement until he was sitting in a cross-legged position, then he grabbed Killua's right hand in his left and started doing something weird with his fingers.

"So, are you gonna promise or not?" he demanded coldly. His stomach was turning over and over and he couldn't calm it down. He had gone out on a limb, and now Gon was acting weird and vague and it was terrifying. "Because I'm not fucking around, if you can't do that, then we can't do any of this," he made a wild gesture at their joined hands, the messy bed, and the lamp they'd somehow knocked over without noticing.

Gon stopped fiddling with his finger, and pulled him upright so they were facing each other on the bed. The only light in the room came from the open skylight. It fell, a square of illumination around them. The rest of the room was shrouded in blackness.

"I'm gonna, but we've gotta do it right," Gon said, scratching the back of his head with his free hand.

" _Right_? There isn't some kind of magic ceremony, I just need to know that you..."

Gon dropped his hand, only grab it again, this time by the little finger.

"No. Absolutely not, this is not what adults _do_ , Gon."

He expected a goofy grin, and maybe a cajoling whine in response, but what he got was a firm gaze and an insistent answer.

"It's what _I_ , do, Killua. This is how I promise." 

He snorted, feeling relief and embarrassment which was stupid, because there was no one else in the room. But the vulnerability was still there, and it felt raw and uncomfortable, so he covered the best way he knew how.

"Like you promised Palm you'd beat Knuckle?"

Gon smiled fondly, remembering, then looked serious again. "That didn't work cause you can't make promises about what other will people do. Only about yourself."

Maybe this was what being in love was really like. Never knowing if the other person was going to do what he always did, or whether he'd surprise you with something so new it was almost ridiculous. Or both.

"I don't know the words," Killua muttered after a long silence. 

He got another quick smile, "That's okay. You just have to listen."

And then his hand was bouncing up and down in time with some imaginary beat and Gon was chanting in a soft, melodic voice.

"I pinkie swear I'll never let go of life unless it's to save someone else's."

The words dangled in the air, like Gon was waiting to see if he was satisfied. Killua laughed just a little, because if he said yes he might cry. 

"If I break my promise," a strong arm pulled him closer, "I have to swallow a thousand needles." 

They were only the width of their connected hands apart. He could see the reflection of the stars in the darkness of Gon's eyes as he whispered.

"Sealed with a kiss."

A strong thumb pressed firmly against his own.

 

It took four hours for the sun to finally come up, but they never did go back to sleep. The power stayed off, so they both lay upside-down on the bed, pointing out shooting stars and constellations. Telling stories. Being best friends again.

Naked best friends, whose shoulders were pressed intimately close. Whose hands were clasped tight together, even though they were, for once, lying still. 

Maybe the best kind of best friends.

* * *

He pushed open the restaurant door with his back, deep in bitter debate. They were still arguing about how Netero's Nen had worked, and after about an hour and a half, the conversation was starting to get irritating. He knew it'd been built on raw speed, while Gon insisted that the old man had managed to slow down time somehow.

It was ridiculous, but at least they could stop talking about it for awhile.

"Finally!" Suzu groaned from somewhere behind him.

"What are you talking about?" he turned just in time to see Alluka laughing for no apparent reason, unless it was their not really lateness. "You _just_ texted me fifteen minutes ago. We had to brush our teeth."

"I told you it was going to take the entire week!" Alluka smirked. The smirk alone was enough to make his blood run cold. Suzu started to laugh, in the dizzy, unbalanced sort of way people do when they haven't slept enough.

"What?" Killua stopped in his tracks, overwhelming suspicion taking over all other conscious thought. Gon, who was still trying to argue, slammed right into his back.

The dining area of the restaurant had been overtaken by a party again, with tables pushed together for socializing instead of eating. Based on the number of leftover glasses and plates, it looked like there'd been at least fifty people there at some recent point in time. But only around a dozen were left, all gathered around one of the tables, playing cards. They were all still wearing their clothes from the night before.

Well, more or less. Alluka had everyone's ties woven into some kind of insane hat, and every chair in the place seemed to have a dress shirt or jacket draped over it.  Suzu was still in her wedding dress, which was all the worse for the wear. Clearly none of them had gone back to their rooms last night.

And no one was answering him. They were all silent, at least the ones who were still conscious, looking much too pleased with themselves. Leorio was there, his glasses pushed onto his forehead like he'd forgot them. Knuckle was sitting in the next chair, blinking slowly, ready to pass out on the table. On a far couch, Hana and Rosalie were curled up, sleeping on top of each other. The rest of the room's inhabitants were people Killua didn't really know, but they seemed very aware of who he and Gon were.

Because they all seemed to be staring at them knowingly.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he said to Suzu, who couldn't seem to pull herself together long enough to answer. "Did any of you even sleep?"

Ila came out from the kitchen, multiple plates full of french toast stacked up his arms. He was the only one who didn't look completely deranged. "Knock it off, all of you," he called out as he crossed the room. "Be nice."

"Do you know how hard it was to pretend that I didn't know but then knew when I _already_ knew??" Leorio drawled in annoyance, throwing a card on the table. "Kurapika thinks this is very sweet, but he wasn't here to put up with you oblivious idiots."

"Knew...?" Killua turned to Alluka, who was still giggling into her orange juice. "Alluka, _what are they talking about?_ "

Gon cleared his throat, muttering the obvious, "Um... Killua, I think they know we aren't... er... weren't..."

"So you're telling me that _all_ of you were in on this?" Killua gaped at his sister, who couldn't stop laughing long enough to look at him, let alone respond.

Suzu walked over to her side, like she was trying to create a unified front of meddlers. She pulled herself together long enough to cross her arms, and nod, "Even if Alluka hadn't told us because she was _worried about you_..."

"I don't even really know either of you but it was obvious, I mean..." Ila offered as he handed out the plates since Suzu was cackling once again.

"Wait, _what_?"

Alluka raised her eyebrow, "Nii-chan, only people who haven't hooked up have _that_ much sexual tension."

And the room exploded. 

Leorio howled, knocking his glasses onto the floor completely. The sound jolted Knuckle back to the land of the conscious, and he knocked two glasses and a beer bottle across the room. Ila made a sound that had to be laughter, but it came entirely from his nose. Suzu fell into his chest, holding on to his shirt to keep upright as she laughed hysterically.

Next to him, Gon laughed nervously. 

"Don't encourage this!" he shrieked into the top of Suzu's head. "I don't want to hear about sexual tension from you, Alluka! Just... no!" 

"I'm not the only one who thinks it," Alluka said in a sing-song voice, hopefully referring to Nanika and not the entire Hunter Association.

"Hana and Rosalie knew as soon as they saw you together," a woman that he _did not know_ said. "They're like bloodhounds for drama, those two."

Killua wanted to melt into the floor. Or stab someone. Or maybe both. 

There was a loud slam, and all of the plates bounced several inches into the air.

"WAIT JUST A DAMN MINUTE, YOU CLOWNS."

Killua hadn't really expected Knuckle of all people to put a stop to this, but he wasn't about to get in his way. The man slowly stood up, and made his way over to Killua's side, putting his arm over his shoulder in a show of support.

Or... not.

"So, you guys... you were _pretending_ to be together?" he leaned in conspiratorially. He looked confused, and more than a little irritated. That made him the single person in the room who wasn't in on the joke. 

"Well, only kinda," Gon lifted his head, still chuckling. "I know I wasn't doing anything I didn't already really really really really..."

"THEY GET THE PICTURE, GON," Killua felt his ears catch fire.

"...want to do."

"But you're not pretending now, right?" Knuckle yanked on his shoulder. He muttered some more things about Gon being a nice boy, and if Killua hurt him he'd end up with all of limbs busted. His breath smelled like coffee, and it was disgusting and...

...wait... why the hell was Killua letting himself be embarrassed about this? Because Gon had found him, and Gon had apologized, and the things they'd done last night they could do every night for the rest of their lives if they wanted. 

He yanked down the collar of his turtleneck to reveal a constellation of hickies.

"I dunno, Knuckle. What's it look like to you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About two years ago I got a concussion that left me with memory damage. After that, writing went from something I did every day, to something that took an excruciating amount of work, and left me in tears most of the time. I stopped doing it altogether. This story has been the first thing I've done since then. And it's been such a joy to write, not least in part due to all the wonderful feedback I've gotten. So if you've left a comment, sent me a message on tumblr, left kudos, or bookmarked this story: Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart. 
> 
> In case for some reason you want the songs that go with the chapters, that's right here: http://8tracks.com/silvercistern/the-predatory-wasp
> 
> Thanks again for reading!


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